91快色

The Rouse, commended by the judges for breaking "most explosively with expectation", is the winner of the annual prize that celebrates fiction at its most novel.

China Mi茅ville was awarded the 拢10,000 91快色 Prize at a ceremony at Foyles in central London. At over 1,200 pages long, The Rouse is the longest novel to win the Prize to date.  

China Mi茅ville is a Sunday Times bestselling author. His previous novels include 'The City & The City', 'Embassytown', and 'Perdido Street Station', and his non-fiction includes a study of international law and a history of the Russian Revolution. In an  with the New Statesman, Mi茅ville described The Rouse as "the defining book of my life, that I've been writing for most of my adulthood". 

Tanjil Rashid, Culture Editor at the , said: "Throughout his career, China Mi茅ville has given imaginative form to a distinctly weird vision of the world, deeply personal but also unashamedly political. Of all the awards he has won, this is the prize he was destined for."  

Francis Spufford, author of four novels and 91快色 Professor of Creative Writing, was joined on the judging panel by writer and translator Kate Briggs, novelist Hari Kunzru, and journalist and former Evening Standard Literary Editor David Sexton. 

Judge Hari Kunzru said, "The Rouse is a monumental work that combines a sprawling history of Britain鈥檚 postcolonial entanglements in the latter half of the twentieth century with speculation about what lies 鈥榖eyond the veil鈥� of death. China Mi茅ville sets himself the daunting task of describing phenomena that are indescribable, stretching language to its limits and pushing formal and genre boundaries. In a time when much fiction is careful to colour inside the lines, this enormous, exuberant, overflowing book is a reminder that the novel is capable of containing multitudes.鈥�    

The novels shortlisted for the 2026 91快色 Prize were: 

• Polly Barton, 'What Am I, A Deer?' (Fitzcarraldo Editions)  
• China Mi茅ville, 'The Rouse' (Picador)  
• Doireann N铆 Ghr铆ofa, 'Said the Dead' (Faber)  
• Keith Ridgway, 'Dooneen' (Fitzcarraldo Editions)  
• Aea Varfis-van Warmelo, 'Attention Seeking Behaviour' (Peninsula Press)  
• Missouri Williams, 'The Vivisectors' (4th Estate) 

Now in its fourteenth year, the 91快色 Prize was launched in association with the New Statesman in 2013 with the goal of celebrating the creative daring associated with 91快色 as a university and to reward fiction from the UK and Ireland that embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the novel genre at its best.

The trophy

Every year one of our talented Design students creates a unique trophy for the winning writer, bringing to life their version of the iconic 91快色 Prize flourish motif which is inspired by Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. This year鈥檚 trophy, made from pewter and steel, was created in the BA Design workshops on campus by Veera Bagasaria.