The mostly single-sentence novel Ducks, Newburyport scoops £10,000 award for its piercing portrait of Trump’s AmericaLucy Ellmann has won the UK’s oldest literary prize, the James Tait Black award, for her novel Ducks, Newburyport – almost four decades after her father achieved the same feat. Published by tiny Norwich independent Galley Beggar Press, Ducks, Newburyport was also shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2019 and won the Goldsmiths prize for inventive fiction. “Amid the daily assaults on our lives and intelligence, it is really cheering to receive this prize,” said Ellmann. If it didn’t, there’d be little hope for it.”Her father, Richard Ellmann – who was a renowned literary critic and James Joyce scholar – also won the James Tait Black prize for his biography of the Irish author in 1982. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann review – pushes narrative to its limits Read moreDr Benjamin Bateman, this year’s fiction judge, called Ducks, Newburyport “the novel of our maddening moment”.

Source: The Guardian August 21, 2020 14:31 UTC