The News

Organisers of the Chambery Festival du Premier Roman – a festival celebrating Europe's best emerging literature – have announced the shortlist of the English-language novels for the 2012 season, the 25^th in this popular festival’s history.

Making Shore is one of the 12 shortlisted titles, so our congratulations are due once again to Sara Allerton, who won last summer’s People’s Book Prize for Fiction.

The competition for the French festival will be fierce, as the list includes two novels that have collected the Costa First Novel Award: Kishwar Desai’s Witness the Night (2010) and Raphael Selbourne’s Beauty (2009), and a Richard and Judy-selected novel, Elizabeth Speller’s The Return of Captain John Emmett.

The shortlisted novels are published by Mantle Pan Macmillan, Faber and Faber, Virago, Headline, Tindal Street Press, Maclehose Press, Sceptre, Orion, Beautiful Books and Alma Books – an interesting mix of indies and large houses. The festival selections are made by 3000 participants in regular literary events and reading groups. The English-language reading selections are coordinated by Waverton Good Reads, their affiliate partner in the UK.