These are the 12 authors in line for Sir Walter Scott Historical Fiction £250,000 Prize

The books which have been longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

The longlisted books have all been written in English and were first published in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth last year.

The majority of the books are set at least 60 years ago, a nod to novelist Sir Walter’s most famous work, Waverley, or ‘Tis Sixty Years Since.

The novels on the longlist are The New Life by Tom Crewe; A Better Place by Stephen Daisley; Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein; For Thy Great Pain, Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie;

Music In The Dark by Sallay Magnusson; Cuddy by Benjamin Myers; My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor; The Fraud by Zadie Smith; Mister Timeless Blyth by Alan Spence; The House Of Doors by Tan Twan Eng; In The Upper Country by Kai Thomas; and Absolutely And Forever by Rose Tremain.

Chairwoman of the judges Katie Grant said: “This year’s longlist sweeps us from one end of the world to the other and from the Dark Ages to the 20th century.

“Along the way we hear tales of 15th-century Norwich and of the Highland Clearances of the 1800s; of the secret railroad through the Americas during the mid-19th century, and of forbidden love in London at the turn of the 20th; from tropical Jamaica to Japan and Korea in the late 1800s, and to sultry Penang as the 20th century dawns; onwards to Trinidad, to Rome, to Crete and to New Zealand during the Second World War years; and to London and Paris in the swinging 1960s.

“From the epic to the intimate, from the philosophical to the swashbuckling, from the traditional to the experimental, in each book emotions run deep.

The winner will then be announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in June.