Rachel Cusk’s Parade wins the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize for fiction “at its most novel”.
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Rachel Cusk, one of the most restlessly inventive novelists writing today, has won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for mould-breaking fiction.
Rachel Cusk's Parade, winner of the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize
Dispensing with the mainstays of conventional fiction, Parade offers an enigmatic and thought-provoking meditation on art, gender and the complexities of selfhood.
The triumphant new novel from Cusk was announced as the winner of the prize at a ceremony at Foyles on Wednesday 6 November 2024.
Dr Abigail Shinn, Chair of Judges said: “Examining the life of the artist and the composition of the self, Rachel Cusk’s Parade exposes the power and limitations of our alternate selves. Probing the limits of the novel form and pushing back against convention, this is a work that resets our understanding of what the long form makes possible.”
Tom Gatti, Executive Editor, Culture at The New Statesman said: “It’s hard to imagine a more fitting winner than Rachel Cusk, whose formally daring work embodies the Goldsmiths spirit. The New Statesman is proud to continue its support for this most vital prize.”
Judge Sara Baume said: "Every sentence in Parade seems to grapple with an idea. People die, perspective shifts, scenery changes, and yet there remains a clear, sharp line of thought that holds the reader. In effortlessly beautiful prose Cusk challenges the conventions of the novel form as well as addressing the relationship between literature and visual art, and of how each can exist alongside the ordinariness of life. Parade is a ferociously illuminating novel that embraces the exquisite cruelty of the world at this present moment."
Parade is Rachel Cusk’s fourth nomination for the Goldsmiths Prize: she was shortlisted for Outline, Transit and Kudos, the three novels in her celebrated Outline trilogy. Cusk is also the author of the memoirs A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother and Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation, and several other works of fiction and non-fiction. She is a Guggenheim fellow, and lives in Paris.
Now in its 12th year, the Goldsmiths Prize was launched in association with the New Statesman in 2013 with the goal of celebrating the creative daring associated with Goldsmiths as a university and to reward fiction from the UK and Ireland that embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best. The 2024 shortlist featured:
- Mark Bowles, All My Precious Madness (Galley Beggar)
- Jonathan Buckley, Tell (Fitzcarraldo)
- Rachel Cusk, Parade (Faber & Faber)
- Neel Mukherjee, Choice (Atlantic)
- Lara Pawson, Spent Light (CB Editions)
- Han Smith, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking (John Murray)
Professor Frances Corner, Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London said:
The Goldsmiths Prize makes a significant contribution to literature and shows that bold creative endeavour continues to have a place in the world. As a university we are deeply proud to champion these works which in turn will inspire our students as the next generation of thinkers and writers.
Professor Frances Corner, Goldsmiths Warden
Joining Abigail Shinn on this year’s judging panel were Sara Baume, author of three novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, Xiaolu Guo, memoirist, novelist and film maker whose work has been shortlisted for both the Goldsmiths and Orwell Prizes, and Lola Seaton, associate editor at New Left Review and New Statesman contributing writer.
Entry for the 2024 Prize was open to novels published between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024, written in English by citizens of the UK or the Republic of Ireland, or authors who have been resident in the UK or Republic of Ireland for three years and have their book published there.
The 2024 New Statesman Goldsmiths Prize lecture on why the novel matters was delivered by Deborah Levy on 24 October, as part of the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival, and will be published in the Christmas issue of the New Statesman and at newstatesman.com.