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Madeleine Thien and Robbie Arnott are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s £10,000 Climate fiction prize.
Now in its second year, the prize celebrates novels that engage with the climate crisis through imaginative storytelling. This year’s shortlist spans a wide range of styles, from speculative fiction to reimagined myth.
Thien’s The Book of Records follows a girl who escapes with her father from flooding in a near-future China, and arrives at a large migrant compound called the Sea. The book traces the human costs of the climate crisis and social injustice, weaving personal and historical journeys across generations in what Guardian reviewer Xan Brooks called a “rich and beautiful novel”.
Robbie Arnott was shortlisted for Dusk, about twins who join the hunt for a puma in the Tasmanian wilderness, described in a Guardian review by James Bradley as a “starkly beautiful and deeply felt” novel.
Also in contention for the award is The Tiger’s Share, the second novel by Indian author Keshava Guha, a state-of-the-nation tale of sibling rivalry set in heavily polluted Delhi.
Susanna Kwan was shortlisted for Awake in the Floating City. This debut is about an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for, two of the last remaining people in a flooded San Francisco of the future.
Other novels on the list address the intersection of climate change with competing global crises. Endling, by Maria Reva, considers environmental collapse alongside Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The novel was praised in the Guardian as “dexterous and formally inventive”, and was also longlisted for the Booker prize.
Elsewhere, Helen Phillips’s sixth book, Hum, is set in a near future where robots called “hums” have taken over many jobs, the air is poisonous and the tap water is contaminated. It was described by Daisy Hildyard in the Guardian as “mesmerising and scary”.
The judging panel for this year’s prize features Arifa Akbar, chief theatre critic at the Guardian, novelists Kit de Waal and Jessie Greengrass, climate scientist Friederike Otto, and broadcaster Simon Savidge.
Titles longlisted for the prize that did not make the shortlist were Every Version of You by Grace Chan, Helm by Sarah Hall, Albion by Anna Hope, The Price of Everything by Jon McGoran, Juice by Tim Winton, and Sunbirth by An Yu.
The award is funded by Climate Spring, which also finances and consults on climate-related film and TV projects.
The shortlisted novels range “from intimate family stories to sweeping political and historical narratives”, said Lucy Stone, founder and executive director of Climate Spring. “These novels fluidly move across genres and settings while grappling with some of the defining themes of our time – power, accountability, community and resilience in a changing world.”
The prize was launched in June 2024 at Hay literary festival, and the inaugural winner was Abi Daré’s And So I Roar.
In order to be eligible for this year’s prize, books must have been published in the UK between 1 September 2024 and 31 August 2025. The winner will be announced on 27 May.
