Explore the longlist

DUSK

By Robbie Arnott

An explosive novel of the wild, and the lengths humans will go to control it.

With escaped Puma, Dusk, roaming the distant highlands, outcast twins Iris and Floyd decide to join the hunt.

As they journey up into the wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people than they imagined. Forced to make an uneasy alliance with a fellow tracker, the twins’ lifelong bond is put at risk. And as the trio close in on their prey, it becomes clear where the true danger lies . . .

‘A climate Western about two outcasts siblings, a displaced animal-world and a scorched environment which explores our relationship to nature, and is filled to the brim with jeopardy.’ – Arifa Akbar, Climate Fiction Prize Chair

Robbie Arnott is the author of Limberlost, The Rain Heron and Flames. He has been named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist, shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and shortlisted twice for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Dusk is his fourth novel. He lives with his family in Hobart, Tasmania.

EVERY VERSION OF YOU

By Grace Chan

Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside an immersive, consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. Across the city, in the abandoned real world, Tao-Yi’s mother remains stubbornly offline, dwindling away between hospital visits and memories of her earlier life in Malaysia.

When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future or an authentic past.

‘Every Version of You expertly, and terrifyingly asks the question, would you take the chance to be quite literally ‘uploaded’ to another world of bliss, or choose to stay behind and try to save this dying one instead.’ – Simon Savidge, Climate Fiction Prize judge

THE TIGER’S SHARE

By Keshava Guha

The fiercest wars are fought between siblings.

Tara, is everything her younger brother isn’t: dedicated, independent, thriving. When their father retires, he summons them to a meeting. But what he has to say threatens to tear the family apart.

Tara’s friend Lila has it all. But when Lila’s father dies unexpectedly, her brother wastes no time in claiming what he thinks is his.

Against a backdrop of ecological collapse and political unrest, together, Tara and Lila are forced to confront the challenge that their ambition poses to patriarchal Delhi society.

‘The Tiger’s Share deftly uses a polluted Delhi backdrop as a metaphor for a toxic relationship between siblings caused, interestingly, by a parent’s conscience over climate crisis..‘ – Simon Savidge, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Keshava Guha was born in Delhi and raised in Bangalore. He studied history and politics at Harvard, and writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He writes regularly on politics, literature and sport for a host of publications.

HELM

By Sarah Hall

Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind — a subject of folklore and awe, who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time.

Rich, wild and vital, Helm is the story of a unique life force, and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.

‘Hall’s multistranded novel, part narrated by an impish wind, is never less than virtuosic. Covering centuries of humanity’s attempts to meddle with the weather it left me with a newly powerful understanding of all we stand to lose.‘ – Jessie Greengrass, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Sarah Hall has twice been nominated for the Man Booker Prize and is the award-winning author of seven novels and three short-story collections. Notably, she is the only author to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice – first in 2013 with ‘Mrs Fox’ and again in 2020 with ‘The Grotesques’.

ALBION

By Anna Hope

The Brooke family are gathering in their eighteenth-century ancestral home to bury Philip: husband, father and the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember.

With the family split over the future of the estate – dreams of rewilding and a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe or a treetop haven for the super-rich – the arrival of Clara, shrouded in secrets, brings with her a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.

‘Anna Hope uses the contested ground of an English estate to ask who gets to decide the future of land in an age of ecological crisis.’ – Kit de Waal, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Anna Hope is the internationally prizewinning and bestselling author of Wake, The Ballroom, Expectation, The White Rock, and Albion. She studied at Oxford University and RADA and her novels have been translated into over 20 languages. She lives in Sussex with her family.

AWAKE IN THE FLOATING CITY

By Susanna Kwan

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. But when the health of Mia – a prickly, elderly lady Bo cares for – deteriorates, Bo determines to honour their disappearing world and the woman who brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

‘Susanna Kwan writes climate change into the grain of ordinary life, allowing us into the intimate world of loss, love and attention..’ – Kit de Waal, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Susanna Kwan is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Kundiman, Storyknife, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Writers’ Grotto, and Vanderbilt University. Awake in the Floating City is her first novel.

THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING

By Jon McGoran

Corporations fall, gangsters are killed, but no-one messes with the Couriers Guild.

Armand Pierce is a courier: the delivery is everything. It’s the Guild’s guarantee, and since the internet went down in the Cyber Wars, all business, legitimate or otherwise, depends on it. Otherwise, he dies.

So when he arrives at his latest destination to find his payload missing, and something going on that threatens to upend the global order, Pierce had better get to the bottom of it, before the Guild, catches up to him.

‘A page-turning, exciting thriller set in a world that forces the hero to ask the inconvenient question of how do you safe the world when corporations have taken over all governance, everyone carries guns, and you just wanted a quiet life but it’s just not an option anymore.’ – Friederike Otto, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Jon McGoran is the author of ten novels for adults and young adults, including the YA science fiction thrillers Spliced, Splintered, and Spiked, the science thrillers Drift, Deadout, and Dust Up, numerous short stories and novellas, and licensed work for The Blacklist, The X-Files, and Zombies vs Robots. A freelance writer, writing teacher, and developmental editor and coach, he lives outside Philadelphia with his wife Elizabeth, a librarian.

HUM

By Helen Phillips

In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

A novel that delves into the complexities of marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities.

‘Beautiful and intimate, this novel about the difficulties of love and care in a world which is increasingly mediated by technology is one I’ve found myself thinking about long after finishing the last page.’ – Jessie Greengrass, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including The Need, a National Book Award nominee and a New York Times Notable Book. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College

ENDLING

By Maria Reva

Yeva is a maverick Ukrainian scientist, trying and failing to breed rare snails while dating plenty of men – not for love, but to fund her work.

Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism.

So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.

‘Against a backdrop of war, crushing inequality, and families in danger, this powerful book makes the unlikely case for saving a snail, and reminds us that giving up is not only wrong, but profoundly boring.’ – Friederike Otto, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. Her story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, won the Kobzar Book Award and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Fiction Prize. Her writing has been featured in ‘The Atlantic’, ‘Granta’, ‘The Best American Short Stories’, and elsewhere. She also works as an opera librettist.

THE BOOK OF RECORDS

By Madeleine Thien

Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time?

Lina and her ailing father have taken refuge at an enclave called the Sea, a staging post between migrations.

In this mysterious building, pasts and futures collide as Lina comes to understand the role of fate in history in a book which explores our search for home and the place of faith and humanity in our world.

‘A dreamlike, powerful book about group of stranded refugees turning to storytelling, binding together their own past, history and stories of refugees of the past to find hope for them, and us, the reader.’ – Friederike Otto, Climate Fiction Prize judge

Madeleine Thien‘s novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize, and won the Governor General’s Award, among other honours. She is also the author of the story collection Simple Recipes (2001) and the novels Certainty (2006) and Dogs at the Perimeter (2012), which was shortlisted for Berlin’s 2014 International Literature Award and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 LiBeraturpreis. Her books and stories have been translated into twenty-five languages. She lives in Montreal, Canada.

JUICE

By Tim Winton

Survival is only the beginning.

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. They’re exhausted, traumatized, desperate now. This is a forsaken place, but as a refuge it’s the most promising they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they’re not alone . . .

‘This is an utterly propulsive, and unputdownable novel, set in a dystopia in which we recognise our world of climate damage. Tim Winton pits those who resist, by any means necessary, against though who deny and abnegate responsiblity, and adds a twist of Sherherezade’s style storytelling, A powerful book in which a quietly contained rage burns off the page.’ – Arifa Akbar, Climate Fiction Prize Chair of judges

Tim Winton is one of Australia’s pre-eminent writers. He has published thirty books, and his work has been translated into twenty-nine languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). In 2023 he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia for ‘distinguished service to literature as an author and novelist, to conservation, and to environmental advocacy’. He lives in Western Australia.

SUNBIRTH

By An Yu

The town fell on hard times long before the sun began to shrink, but now, every few days, a new sliver disappears. As the temperature drops and the lake freezes over, the inhabitants of the town realise that there is no way they can survive. But when the Beacons appear – ordinary people with heads replaced by searing, blinding light, like miniature suns – the residents wonder if they may hold the answer to their salvation, or if they are just another sign of impending ruin.

‘This dystopia about two sisters, a family mystery and a fast disappearing sun weaves the everyday and domestic with climate catastrophe and other-worldly elements so deftly. It asks important questions too of what we do when we have reached the point of no return – stay put or flee – while always remaining highly readable.’ – Arifa Akbar, Climate Fiction Prize Chair of judges

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing. She left at the age of eighteen to study in New York City. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English and lives in Hong Kong. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Braised Pork and Ghost Music.