Grace McCleen wins the Desmond Elliott Prize

Grace McCleen has been named the winner of the fifth Desmond Elliott Prize for her novel The Land of Decoration, published by Chatto & Windus. She carried off this most prestigious £10,000 prize for debut fiction against an exceptionally strong shortlist, which included Patrick McGuinness's The Last Hundred Days (Seren) and Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday). The judges described The Land of Decoration as 'unlike anything you have ever read' and praised McCleen's original language and ideas, and the novel's vivid and life-affirming evocation of the real and surreal life of a young girl in a Christian sect who believes the Last Days have come. On the surface a domestic tale, this novel is apocalyptic in its scope