Out of 1,100 submissions, writer Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child has won the 2024 Novel Prize, and will be published early next year. The Novel Prize is awarded biennially to an unpublished work of literary fiction and “rewards novels that explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and are innovative and imaginative in style.” The winning book is simultaneously published by New Directions in New York, Fitzcarraldo Editions in London, and Giramondo in Sydney. The winning writer also receives a prize of $10,000.
Ruins, Child is Scodellaro’s first novel, following her 2022 debut collection, Some of Them Will Carry Me. The novel is a surreal triptych following six women who live in the same crumbling apartment tower, and “uses the lens of urban infrastructure, social commentary, folklore, choreography and collective listening to create an ethnography of place and an ode to communal ruins.”
Scodellaro’s book joins previous Novel Prize winners Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow, Jonathan Buckley’s Tell, and Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over.
