A NOVELIST in the running for one of the biggest prizes in fiction vowed to celebrate last night – before the result has been announced.
Graeme Macrae Burnet wrote his way onto the longlist for the annual Man Booker Prize with His Bloody Project, a psychological crime thriller set in 19th century Scotland.
The release is one of 13 titles on the “Man Booker Dozen” and puts the fledgling writer on the same shelf as Scottish multi-award winner AL Kennedy and South Africa’s JM Coetzee, who has bagged the gong twice before.
Published in November by Contraband, an imprint of Glasgow-based independent press Saraband, stock of His Bloody Project was expected to sell out by yesterday afternoon.
A reprint was ordered shortly after the prize’s judges released their shortlist at noon, with new copies available to readers next week.
Meanwhile, Saraband founder Sarah Hunt told The National the news had also provoked a rush of enquiries from overseas firms keen to acquire the rights to the book and unleashed a deluge of offers from amateur authors seeking to follow Macrae Burnet’s success.
The former TV researcher – who does not have an agent – secured a deal with Saraband after sending in the unsolicited manuscript of his first novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau.
German and US versions of His Bloody Project are already in the works, with the screen rights acquired by Synchronicity Films.
Yesterday he was fielding calls from agents keen to represent him as interest in his work spiked.
Judges sifted through 155 submissions to draw up the longlist, which will be whittled down to just six in September, with each of those authors receiving a £2,500 prize and a specially bound edition of their book.
The winner will be announced the following month at a televised ceremony in London, with the winner gaining a further £50,000 and international recognition.
Last year’s winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James, has sold over 315,000 copies to date in the UK and Commonwealth and is available in 20 languages.
After news of his selection broke yesterday, Macrae Burnet, from Kilmarnock, told The National: “I am completely overwhelmed.
“I bumped into the writer Louise Welsh when I’d just handed in the final draft for His Bloody Project. She said to always celebrate the moment when you finish a novel or your novel comes out because you’ve spent two years writing it.
“I go to the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and write in a corner – this is a huge moment for me.
“The reach of the Booker Prize is massive so I will most definitely be celebrating tonight.
“My publisher has the champagne on ice.”
His Bloody Project tells the story of 17-year-old Roderick Macrae and the brutal murder of three people in a remote crofting community.
The novel sets out the teenager’s guilt from the start, slowly unfolding the reasons for the crime, the identities of victims and Macrae’s fate through his memoir, trial transcripts and newspaper reports.
The writing process saw Macrae Burnet research historical court processes, 19th-century crofting communities and contemporary theories about criminal psychology.
He said: “His Bloody Project is a novel about a crime rather than a crime novel. I want readers to engage with the character and to be rooting for the protagonist.”
He went on: “Everybody who writes a book wants it to be recognised and you work really, really hard to make your book as good as it can be. It’s always nice to get good reviews or a message saying ‘I like your book’. That’s really lovely – this is that worked up 1,000 times.”
The nomination marks the first time Saraband has had an author in the running for the Man Booker Prize and Hunt praised her “humble” and “brilliant” signing.
She went on: “There are people contacting us from all around the world.
“We were speechless when the news came through. Graeme and I live quite close to one another and we’re friends, and I was ringing and texting him and we were just so excited that we couldn’t really think of anything to say.
“This is such a feather in his cap and he absolutely deserves it.”
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