Reading List · Literary fiction
The James Tait Black Prizes are awarded each year by the University of Edinburgh for the best work of fiction and the best biography published in the previous year. They were founded in 1919 by the widow of James Tait Black, a partner in the publisher A & C Black, and are, with the Hawthornden Prize, Britain’s oldest literary awards. The winners are chosen by university scholars and literature students. Each prize is worth £10,000.
By Lisanne Swart · 111 winning books since 1919 · Literary fiction · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 28 October 2026
Click a title to read about it further down ↓
The 2026 Fiction prize, for books published in 2025, went to Shady Lewis’s On the Greenwich Line, translated by Katharine Halls, by a unanimous decision of the judges. The next prizes, for books published in 2026, follow the same annual cycle; no 2027 dates had been published at the time of writing.
Quick answer
The James Tait Black Prize for Fiction is the University of Edinburgh’s annual £10,000 award for the best novel published in the previous year, judged by scholars and students. The latest winner is On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, translated by Katharine Halls, which won the 2026 prize.
How this page chooses
The timeline at the top lists every winner for Fiction, all 111 of them. The latest fifteen have their own entry further down, oldest first; the titles in the timeline that you can click are those.
Under each book is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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An experimental novel made up of a conversation between two men, apparently on a porch, who drift through seemingly pointless debates without settling anything; the publisher likens its mood to Waiting for Godot.
Powell is an American writer whose work has been nominated for an American Book Award.
Set in small-town Scotland in the 1970s, the novel follows 16-year-old Simon Crimmons, who leaves school to work as a train driver over the course of one summer.
Warner’s first novel, Morvern Callar, was adapted into a film starring Samantha Morton.
Narrated by Walter Thirsk, the novel is set in a remote English village whose pastoral way of life is overturned by economic change following an enclosure act.
It was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2015.
In September 2008 a banker whose career and marriage are failing is visited at his South Kensington house by a long-lost friend, a former mathematics prodigy who returns to make a confession; the story ranges from Kabul to Oxford and Dhaka.
It is Rahman’s first novel and also won the inaugural International Ranald McDonald Prize in 2016.
Set mainly in Detroit around the 2008 financial crash and the election of Barack Obama, the novel concerns a supposedly utopian experiment in urban renewal in the 21st-century city.
The prize was announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 15 August 2016.
In 1990s Camden Town, Eilis, an 18-year-old Irish student starting at drama school, begins a turbulent relationship with Stephen, a 39-year-old actor, both of them shaped by difficult pasts.
It is McBride’s second novel and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.
A debut collection of short stories that, in the publisher’s words, centres on the difficulties of communication and on thoughts that may never be fully communicable.
It was published by the small press Influx Press and longlisted for the 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize.
In the summer of 2017 Kathy, a writer, is getting married and spending the first summer of her forties adjusting to it, moving from a Tuscan hotel to a politically paralysed UK; the character is a composite of Laing and Kathy Acker.
It is Laing’s first novel; Laing shared the £10,000 prize with the other shortlisted authors.
An Ohio mother of four, a former adjunct history teacher who bakes pies to support her family after cancer treatment, narrates the novel largely in one long sentence, interspersed with passages about a mountain lioness searching for her cubs.
It won the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.
Mathilda, long drawn to the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, becomes fixated on Hermia Druitt, a forgotten Black modernist poet, and follows her trail to an artists’ residency in Dun, a small European town.
It is a debut novel and won the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in 2021.
Loosely connected characters on the fringes of London life appear, disappear and reappear across nine chapters, dealing with sexuality, racism, drug use, class and the difficulty of finding housing in a changing city.
It was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.
A modern retelling of David Copperfield set in Lee County, Virginia, following Damon “Demon” Fields, born to a teenage mother in a trailer home, through poverty, foster care and addiction during the opioid crisis.
It was co-winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and won the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
In the town of Praiseworthy in Australia’s north, Cause Man Steel plans to gather the local donkeys, which he believes will matter after civilisation collapses, while his household lives under a government intervention programme.
It won the 2024 Miles Franklin Award and the 2024 Stella Prize.
In the summer of 2005 a local vet becomes fixated on the 14-year-old daughter of a farmer whose cows he tends, an obsession that grows into a crime and a confession threatening the community.
Rijneveld is a winner of the International Booker Prize; the 2025 Biography prize also went to a translated book.
An unnamed council employee in London agrees to arrange the burial of Ghiyath, a young man who fled Syria, as a favour for a friend in Cairo, while handling the case of a woman who dies after a housing interview.
It is only the third translated work to win the Fiction prize, chosen by a unanimous decision.
The prizes were founded in 1919 in memory of James Tait Black, a partner in the publisher A & C Black, and the university has since supplemented the original endowment. At first the decision rested with the holder of the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, and the prizes were run with little publicity.
Today the winners are chosen by staff in the university’s Department of English and Scottish Literature, assisted by postgraduate students who help read the submissions and draw up the shortlists. For the 2026 prizes the judges considered 300 fiction titles and 200 biographies, the highest number of submissions recorded.
A Biography prize has been awarded alongside Fiction since 1919; recent winners include Lamia Ziadé’s My Great Arab Melancholy (2025 prize) and Marlene L. Daut’s The First and Last King of Haiti (2026 prize). An author may win each prize only once, but may win both in the same year.
A Drama prize was added in 2012, with the first winner, Rory Mullarkey’s Cannibals, announced in 2013; it has been paused since the 2019 award. In 2012 a special Best of the James Tait Black award, chosen from six past Fiction winners, went to Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus.
It is a pair of annual literary prizes, for fiction and biography, awarded by the University of Edinburgh since 1919. Each is worth £10,000.
Shady Lewis won with On the Greenwich Line, translated by Katharine Halls and published by Peirene Press.
The 2025 Fiction prize went to Lucas Rijneveld’s My Heavenly Favourite, translated by Michele Hutchison; the result was announced on 30 May 2025.
The university lists winners by the year in which the book was published; the prize itself is awarded the following year.
Scholars of English literature at the University of Edinburgh, with postgraduate students helping to read submissions and choose the shortlists.
It and the Hawthornden Prize, both founded in 1919, are described as Britain’s oldest literary awards.
Yes. Translations first published in Britain are eligible; On the Greenwich Line was only the third translated work to win the Fiction prize.
No new Drama prize has been awarded since 2019; the category has been paused.
Winner list last verified 28 October 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
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