Conville & Walsh

Conville & Walsh are delighted to announce that, Rachel Joyce’s first novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry has been shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. This makes the third year in a row that a Conville & Walsh author has reached the shortlist, with Pigeon English nominated last year, and The Girl with Glass Feet winning the prize the year before that.

When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other.

He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone.

All he knows is that he must keep walking.

To save someone else’s life.

The Desmond Elliott Prize was inaugurated in honour of the publisher and literary agent, one of the most charismatic and successful men in this field, who died in August 2003. He stipulated that his estate should be invested in a charitable trust that would fund a literary award “to enrich the careers of new writers”. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the Prize is intended to support new writers and to celebrate their fiction.

The winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2012 will be announced on Thursday 28th June at Fortnum & Mason, Desmond’s ‘local grocer’, in London.