LOTE wins the James Tait Black 2021 Fiction Prize!

LOTE by Shola von Reinhold has captured more hearts and won another literary prize!

The UK's longest-running literary prizes, the James Tait Black Prizes announced LOTE as their Fiction winner at a pre-recorded event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, presented by author and broadcaster Sally Magnusson. The other £10,000 prize was awarded in the Biography category to Doireann Ní Ghríofa for A Ghost in the Throat—an exploration of the life of 18th-century poet, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. 

Fiction judge Dr Benjamin Bateman (University of Edinburgh) called LOTE “an imaginative tour de force that combines a gripping detective plot with a thoughtful meditation on the historical neglect of Black queer and women artists.”

LOTE is the debut book from Shola, who is based in Glasgow.

"Not to be too dramatique, but my head is still spinning too much to make any kind of concise statement. Right now, I can't stop thinking of Hermia Druitt, who was alive a century ago when this prize was conceived, encountering many of the modernist winners and shortlistees but herself a Black, Afro-Scottish writer, unlikely to have been shortlisted for any such thing - so there's a strange joint sense of poetic mourning and justice for her and what she represents in the book. I am of course also delighted, and deeply thankful to the student and faculty judges for choosing it."

 — Shola von Reinhold

LOTE is available both here at Jacaranda and at your local bookshop.