The longlist for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize has been announced. It includes five novels and nine works of non-fiction:
* John Coates, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (Fourth Estate)
* Joshua Cody, [Sic] (Bloomsbury)
* Nick Coleman, The Train in the Night (Jonathan Cape)
* Mohammed Hanif, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (Jonathan Cape)
* Peter James, Perfect People (Macmillan)
* Harry Karlinsky, The Evolution of Inanimate Object (The Friday Project)
* Darian Leader, What is Madness? (Hamish Hamilton)
* Ken Macleod, Intrusion (Orbit)
* Professor Peter Piot, No Time to Lose (W.W. Norton & Company)
* Michael Shermer, The Believing Brain (Constable & Robinson)
* Tim Spector, Identically Different (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson)
* Rose Tremain, Merivel: A Man of his Time (Chatto & Windus)
* Thomas Wright, Circulation (Chatto & Windus)
* Paul Zak, The Moral Molecule (Transworld)
The Wellcome Trust Book Prize celebrates the best of medicine in literature by awarding £25,000 each year for the finest fiction or non-fiction book centred around medicine. The Prize recognises literature of the highest quality that engages with the human experience of health and illness. It aims to stimulate interest and debate about medicine and literature and to encourage new ways of thinking about medical science by reaching the broadest possible audience.
The shortlist for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize will be announced on 11 October and the winner will be announced on 7 November 2012.
Chairing the panel of judges this year is journalist, broadcaster and author, Mark Lawson. Mark is joined on the panel by Dr Brooke Magnanti, research scientist, blogger and author; Henry Thomas Marsh, a leading British neurosurgeon and pioneer of neurosurgical advances; Sue Matthias, Editor of the Financial Times Weekend Magazine and Ruth Padel, a poet, writer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Zoological Society of London.
