A debut novel about a bullied Derbyshire teenager which has drawn comparisons with DH Lawrence is the narrow favourite for the Desmond Elliott prize, a new literary accolade which rewards the best first novel of the year.
Edward Hogan's Blackmoor is the story of an awkward teenager who stumbles upon the secrets of the life and death of his mother Beth, a half-blind albino who lived in the mysterious, vanished Derbyshire village of Blackmoor. Coming in narrowly behind Hogan's debut is Lebanon-born Nathalie Abi-Ezzi's A Girl Made of Dust, the story of family life in a village just outside Beirut in the 1980s as the country is torn apart by civil war, and rounding out the shortlist is critic Anthony Quinn's The Rescue Man, set at the outbreak of the first world war as a historian joins a team rescuing the wounded from bomb-damaged buildings.
