China Miéville Wins £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for 1,264-Page Novel 'The Rouse'

The Rouse, which took its author two decades to write, is the longest novel to win the prize since it launched in 2013, the Guardian reports.

China Miéville has won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for The Rouse, a 1,264-page novel that took him about 20 years to complete, according to the Guardian. The winner was announced at a ceremony in London on Wednesday 4 November. The book is the longest novel to take the prize since it was launched in 2013 to reward fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”. It beat five other shortlisted titles: Polly Barton’s What Am I, a Deer?, Keith Ridgway’s Dooneen, Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo’s Attention Seeking Behaviour and Missouri Williams’s The Vivisectors.

The novel opens in London in 1973 and follows Maur, whose son Ewan dies in an apparent suicide at an army barracks. As she tries to learn what happened, she finds allies among other bereaved families and a journalist, and gradually discovers the British state’s covert interest in the paranormal; her search runs alongside the story of a soldier with experience of supernatural forces. Judges’ chair Francis Spufford said the book “broke most explosively with expectation” in its ambition, bold use of history, linguistic experiment and sheer scale, while fellow judge Hari Kunzru called it “a monumental work”. Reviewing it for the Guardian, Stuart Kelly described it as “maximalist, dense, disorienting and discomfiting”.

Miéville, who grew up in London, is known for novels including Perdido Street Station, The City & The City and Embassytown, and has won the Hugo, World Fantasy and Arthur C Clarke awards. He has described The Rouse as “the defining book of my life”, according to an interview with the New Statesman, which co-founded the prize with Goldsmiths, University of London. Now in its 14th year, the prize is open to novels by writers from, or resident in, the UK and Ireland; last year’s winner was CD Rose for We Live Here Now. This report relies on the Guardian’s account of the ceremony and the judges’ remarks.