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13 March 2013updated 27 Sep 2015 3:57am

Folio Society to sponsor new £40,000 literary prize

Books will be nominated by a one-hundred strong Academy of "ideal" readers.

By Philip Maughan

On Wednesday evening it was announced that the Folio Society will take responsibility for funding a new £40,000 fiction prize. Previously referred to as the “Literature Prize”, the Folio Prize aims to “recognise and celebrate the best English-language fiction from around the world,” distinguishing itself from the Booker and Costa Book Awards by accepting nominations from countries outside the UK and Ireland.

Nominations for the prize will not come from publishers and agents, as is traditional with literary prizes, but from a one-hundred strong academy of “ideal first readers”: the first attached to a major book prize. The Folio Prize Academy will be a fluid collective of writers and critics, out of which six judges – three from the UK, two from outside, with no more than three members of the same gender – will be chosen each year to carve out a shortlist of eight books.

The novelists Nicole Krauss, J M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie will join essayists Geoff Dyer and Pankaj Mishra, alongside critics such as New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman and Granta editor John Freeman, as members of the Academy chosen for their “commitment to excellence in fiction”.

The impetus for a new literary prize emerged amid the controversy surrounding the 2011 Booker Prize, when the judges suggested “readability” and a novel’s capacity to “zip along” as deciding factors in their selection process. “When we first announced our intentions a year and a half ago, we were surprised by the coverage and noise generated by our single speculative press release,” Andrew Kidd, Managing Director of Aitken Alexander Associates and Folio Prize founded told those gathered at the British Library for the announcement. “What it suggests is that storytelling still matters, and so we find ourselves here.”

He stressed they would not be searching for “difficult or obscure” books. “Many, if not most great books go down easily,” he added. “That said, the Prize will not apologise for getting excited about books that might appear daunting at first, but that go on to reward dedicated readers by reflecting the world back at them in an entirely unexpected way.”

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The Folio Society was founded in 1947 with the intention of creating “editions of the world’s greatest literature in a format worthy of the contents”. The publisher, which produces illustrated and hard-bound editions of classic texts, markets itself as a celebrant of the books as objets d’art. Philip Pullman, a member of the Academy, said: “I think their sponsorship of this new prize is a recognition that while literature can become manifest in many different forms, the book – the codex – is at the heart of what we understand literature to be.” The Folio Society will produce a deluxe, reimagined edition of the winning book each year, in collaboration with its existing publisher.

The six academicians chosen to be judges will be announced in July this year. The shortlist will be announced next February, with the first winner being declared in March 2014.

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