Benjamin Myers wins 2023 Goldsmiths prize for ‘vital’ novel Cuddy
Benjamin Myers has won the 2023 Goldsmiths prize for Cuddy, a novel that combines poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts in retelling the story of the eponymous Anglo-Saxon saint Cuthbert and his connection to Durham Cathedral.
Cuddy “is a book of remarkable range, virtuosity and creative daring”, said judging chair Tom Lee, lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths. “A millennia-spanning epic told in a multitude of perfectly realised voices, this visionary story of St Cuthbert and the cathedral built in his honour echoes through the ages.”
Related: Cuddy by Benjamin Myers review – a visionary history
Myers was announced as the winner of the prize at a ceremony on Wednesday and will receive £10,000. The prize, run with the New Statesman, celebrates mould-breaking fiction.
Cuddy is organised in four parts, with an additional prologue and interlude. The main sections span the years 995 to 2019, with each story relating to Durham Cathedral, which was founded in 1093 and houses Cuthbert’s shrine.
“Cuddy crafts its own epic spans, crossing centuries, placing the life of a cathedral on a human scale (and vice versa), translating the conversations between people and the places that hold and summon our ideas,” said judge and novelist Helen Oyeyemi. “Part poetry, part electricity, this story carries relics between the ephemeral and the eternal with all the disarming vitality of a truly illuminated text.”
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Myers was born in Durham in 1976, and has written a dozen books including The Offing; The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction; Beastings, which won the Portico prize; and Pig Iron, which won the Gordon Burn prize.
Tom Gatti, judge and New Statesman executive editor, said that Cuddy was an “extraordinary novel” and “a prime example of the sort of ambitious, vital fiction” the prize was founded to celebrate.
In a Guardian review, Nina Allan wrote: “Myers’s experience as a writer shows in his elliptical approach to history and those who make it, and his willingness to take on complex material that retains its mystery even as it compels further discussion.
The symbiosis of poetry and story, of knowledge and deep love, marks out Cuddy as a singular and significant achievement.”
Alongside Gatti, Oyeyemi and Lee on the judging panel were author Maddie Mortimer and New Statesman assistant culture editor Ellen Peirson-Hagger.
The other five shortlisted books were Lori & Joe by Amy Arnold, The Long Form by Kate Briggs, Never Was by H Gareth Gavin, Man-Eating Typewriter by Richard Milward and The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell.
Previous winners include Eimear McBride, Isabel Waidner and Ali Smith. In 2022, Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams became the first collaborative authors to win the prize with their novel Diego Garcia.
