From the Academy

Prizes are a powerful means of celebrating books that might otherwise fail to find due recognition. We asked our Academicians to imagine that the Folio Prize had existed through time, and to nominate a book that they would like to have seen win. Some of their choices qualify as truly undiscovered, while others may not have received the attention they deserve, but they take in every kind of form, style and subject, and are all wonderful books.

You can see more of our Academicians' answers in 'From the Academy'

Ruth Scurr on Collected Stories by William Trevor (2009)

This two-volume collection, 1800 pages in total, is a lasting monument to literature. Trevor would have deserved the prize for any one of his novels or individual short story collections. Graham Greene said of Angels at the Ritz (1975) “Surely one of the best collections, if not the best collection, since Joyce’s Dubliners.” John Banville has described Trevor as “the greatest living writer of short stories.” Trevor’s most recent novel, Love and Summer (2009) is a quiet masterpiece, unjustly overlooked by the prize committees of that year.