The James Tait Black Prizes 2021 Shortlists

Britain’s longest running literary awards, the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prizes for Fiction and Biography are awarded by the University of Edinburgh’s School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures – the oldest centre for the study of English Literature in the world.

This year’s shortlists abound in stylistic flair and narrative excellence. The fiction shortlist boasts a novel of survival and rebellion in Idi Amin’s Uganda and a haunting fable of climate change denial, whilst the biography shortlist celebrates the first leader of the independent Black state of Haiti and the immortal legacy of a classic Irish poem.

The winners will be announced during the Edinburgh International Book Festival this August.