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The winner of the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize

Solar Bones author Mike McCormack said winning the Goldsmiths Prize 2016 was “payback” for his publishers Tramp Press and agent who had backed him during his “long and difficult adventure” as a writer.

Speaking after collecting his £10,000 cheque at an event held at Foyles Charing Cross Road, McCormack said: “It’s about time the prize-giving community honoured experimental works and time that mainstream publishers started honouring their readership by saying: ‘Here are experimental books’.

“Readers are smart. They’re up for it. That was what the people at Tramp Press taught me – they’re up for it. There are readers out there and they have been proved right.”

Bernardine Evaristo on Solar Bones The life of a middle-aged engineer in the west of Ireland might not sound like a remarkable fictional proposition, but this novel explores the personal, domestic, political, philosophical and global in a free-flowing prose style that elevates it into something quite beautiful and transcendent. Its impressive emotional and intellectual energies fuel a wholly enjoyable reading experience.

Mike McCormack, Solar Bones


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