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Francis Spufford


UK flag (b.1964)

Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (1997), has edited two acclaimed literary anthologies and a collection of essays about the history of technology. His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. His second, The Child That Books Built, gave Neil Gaiman 'the peculiar feeling that there was now a book I didn't need to write'. His third, Backroom Boys, was called 'as nearly perfect as makes no difference' by the Daily Telegraph and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.
 

Awards: RSL (2022), Desmond Elliott (2017), Costa (2016)  see all

Genres: Historical, Science Fiction
 
Novels
   Golden Hill (2016)
   Light Perpetual (2021)
   Cahokia Jazz (2023)
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Non fiction show
 
Books containing stories by Francis Spufford
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The Ends of the Earth (2007)
An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic
edited by
Elizabeth Kolbert

Awards
2024 Sidewise Award for Best Long-Form Alternate History : Cahokia Jazz
2022 Encore Award : Light Perpetual
2017 Desmond Elliott Prize : Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York
2016 Costa Book Award for Best First Novel : Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York

Award nominations
2024 HWA Gold Crown Award (shortlist) : Cahokia Jazz
2024 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel (nominee) : Cahokia Jazz
2021 HWA Gold Crown Award (longlist) : Light Perpetual
2021 Booker Prize (longlist) : Light Perpetual
2017 Walter Scott Prize for Best Historical Novel (nominee) : Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York
2017 The Writers' Prize for Fiction (nominee) : Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York
2017 British Book Award Debut Book of the Year (shortlist) : Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York


Francis Spufford recommends
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No Small Thing (2024)
Orlaine McDonald
"Raw and beautiful: the joys and the torments of the mother-daughter bond, cascading down three brilliantly-observed generations."
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The Ministry of Time (2024)
Kaliane Bradley
"Sly and illusionless in its use of history, lovely in its sentences, warm - no, hotter than that - in its characterisation, devastating in its denouement. A weird, kind, clever, heartsick little time bomb of a book."
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Enlightenment (2024)
Sarah Perry
"A book in which everything is kindled into light by Sarah Perry's rapt, luminous attention: friendship, betrayal, faith, astronomy, the drizzle on the streets of Essex and the heavens above them."

More recommendations 


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