4th Estate

Amazing news at 4th Estate HQ! Care Of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles has been longlisted for the Desmond Elliott prize 2012.

The committee noted how ‘this longlist reflects a trend in debut fiction of bringing contemporary resonance to some traditional heavyweight themes’, and Wiles’ novel is no exception.

Care of Wooden Floors is about how a tiny oversight can trip off a disastrous and farcical (fatal, even) chain of consequences. It’s about a friendship between two men who don’t know each other very well. It’s about alienation and being alone in a foreign city. It’s about the quest for perfection and the struggle against entropy. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors…

Books that made the longlist are:

• Absolution by Patrick Flanery
• Bed by David Whitehouse
• Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson
• The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood
• Care Of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles
• The Land Of Decoration by Grace McCleen
• The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness
• The Missing Shade of Blue by Jennie Erdal
• The Spider King’s Daughter by Chibundu Onuzo
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

A shortlist of three books will be announced in May, and the winner will be announced on Thursday 28^th June at Fortnum & Mason, London.

The 2011 winner was our very own Anjali Joseph for Saraswati Park. Fingers crossed for a repeat of this fantastic success!