‘A novel to be swept away by': Lucy Steeds wins Waterstones debut fiction prize for The Artist
Set in an artist's household in 1920s Provence, the novel follows aspiring English journalist Joseph Adelaide, reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece Ettie, who has her own hidden artistic ambitions.
'With lavish, luxurious description, Steeds evokes the sensory environment: the smell of hot earth, the sound of crickets, sunlight on soft yellow stones, 'a constellation of fireflies … spreading and regrouping like a net of stars,'' wrote Christobel Kent in a Guardian review of the novel.
'Her characterisation too is vivid and sure-footed: the anguished Joseph, the fiercely determined Ettie, and at the centre of his shadowy lair, the great tortured brute Tata – half Cyclops, half Minotaur – each of them groping towards artistic expression.'
Steeds will receive £5,000 and a 'promise of ongoing commitment' to her writing career. The Artist was selected from a shortlist of six books which also featured Confessions by Catherine Airey, Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal, Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter, and When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén.
The winner was chosen by a panel of booksellers informed by votes and feedback from more than 650 booksellers from Waterstones shops.
Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones, said Steeds' novel 'stood out for its atmospheric, sensory prose, and its headily evocative sense of time and place.
'This is a gorgeously claustrophobic novel to be fully swept away by: The Artist has something for readers of all tastes and heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice. We can't wait to see what Lucy Steeds does next.'
Steeds, who is originally from north London, began writing the novel while living in France. Commenting on the inspiration behind the novel, she said she was 'fascinated by the concept of art monsters. These tyrannical figures who act abominably to the people around them in order to create great art.
Sign up to Bookmarks
Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you
after newsletter promotion
'I was less interested in the art we've gained from these monsters, and more interested in the art we've lost. What could have been created if these tyrants weren't crushing everyone around them?'
Waterstones launched the prize in 2022, celebrating the best work of debut fiction written in any form. Previous winners of the prize include Alice Winn and Ferdia Lennon, who won last year for his novel Glorious Exploits, which went on to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize and The Authors' Club 2025 best first novel award.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Is sarcasm the lowest form of wit? If not, what is?
Is sarcasm the lowest form of wit? If not, what is? Jason Frank, Cumbria Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@ A selection will be published next Sunday.
Metro
2 hours ago
- Metro
Netflix hit watched 250 million times returns — and 6 more shows to binge
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video After a two-year wait, Netflix's most-watched English-language show of all time is returning this month. Viewed an enormous 252.1 million times, Wednesday has been described as 'tons of fun' and 'captivating' by fans on Rotten Tomatoes, while critics heaped praise on Jenna Ortega's acting skills as the sardonic Wednesday Addams. The series comes second only to the first season of Squid Game in Netflix's global TV rankings, but the upcoming instalment could well steal the top spot. The show follows Wednesday Addams, who enrols at Nevermore Academy, a school for outcasts, after being expelled from her previous high school. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. Season one saw the titular character adjust to her new life at Nevermore and grapple with psychic visions, all while investigating a string of supernatural murders. Now, Wednesday is returning to the Academy, but this time with her family in tow. Her brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), arrives on campus, while mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has accepted a role at Nevermore. Meanwhile, the trailer revealed a 'jaw-dropping' twist that sees Wednesday trying to save her roommate Enid's (Emma Myers) life, and Lady Gaga will be joining the star-studded show with a cameo. Other new cast members include Joanna Lumley as Wednesday's grandmother, Steve Buscemi as Principal Dort and Billie Piper as the Academy's new head of music. The new season of Wednesday will premiere on Netflix in two parts, with part one landing on August 6 and part two on September 3 — but it's not the only hit series returning this month. From reality TV to comedy, thriller and romance, viewers across the genres are getting ready for their favourite shows to return. Fourteen famous faces will be taking on the SAS selection process in this gruelling reality TV show, joined by an elite team of ex-Special Forces soldiers. This year's line-up includes former footballers Adebayo Akinfenwa and Troy Deeney, dancer and reality star Louie Spence, Love Islanders Tasha Ghori, Chloe Burrows and Adam Collard and The Traitors winner Harry Clark to name a few. Simon Cowell will also be making an appearance on the show, but not as a recruit. Instead, he appears when calling former X Factor star Lucy Spraggan to help motivate her. Lucy has revealed that Simon, who walked her down the aisle during her wedding last year, was left fuming after the directing staff hung up on him. Where to watch: Celebrity SAS 2025 will premiere on Channel 4 on Sunday, August 3, with episodes airing every Sunday and Monday thereafter. Starring Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne, Apple TV Plus comedy Platonic follows a pair of former college best friends who get back in touch as they approach midlife. The pair fell out when stay-at-home mum Sylvia (Byrne) told the now recently divorced Will (Rogan) that she didn't think he should marry his fiancée. As they reconnect, their chaotic friendship begins to consume their lives. The show drew a lot of comparisons to 1989's When Harry Met Sally, but it isn't a rom-com. In fact, it subtly subverts the genre. Season one ended with a time jump, with Will engaged and Sylvia running her own event planning business. In season two, the pair once again grapple with making their co-dependent friendship work, now that Will is in a committed relationship. Where to watch: The first two episodes of Platonic Season 2 land on Apple TV Plus on August 6, followed by one episode weekly until October 1. Big budget reality TV show The Fortune Hotel has been likened to The Traitors for its cat-and-mouse premise. Hosted by Stephen Mangan, the show sees 10 pairs of players presented with 10 suitcases – eight are empty, one contains the £250,000 jackpot, and the other is the dreaded Early Checkout, which signifies that their time on the show is over. The contestants swap cases throughout the show, and must lie and deceive their way to getting hold of the £250,000 jackpot. The Fortune Hotel saw three pairings make it to a nail-biting final last May, and this month it's returning for round two. Metro columnist Adam Miller headed to The Gallivant Hotel in Rye last year to have a go at playing The Fortune Hotel for himself. 'My nerves were shot. After we'd swapped our case with a rival team (who we felt had become visibly more nervous after the cocktail challenge), we were pretty confident we were holding the prize money. 'But so did everyone else. The next team pinched our case from us immediately and we were stuck with theirs, which, to my horror, felt noticeably lighter than the case we'd been clinging onto all day. Surely that could only mean one thing – we had the check-out card. 'After being a faux reality TV contestant for a matter of hours, I have a newfound respect for anyone brave enough to play these games for real and not buckle.' Read more about Adam's experience playing The Fortune Hotel. Where to watch: The Fortune Hotel returns to ITV and ITVX on August 6. We've had eight seasons of unorthodox dating show Love is Blind already, and last year a new UK version took to screens for the first time, hosted by Emma and Matt Willis. This month, the experiment (which sees couples get engaged before meeting in person) is returning. Following the couples over several weeks, the show sees them move in together, plan their wedding, and find out if their physical connection is as strong as the emotional one they had already developed. Season one was full of the usual drama, with three couples saying 'I do' (one of which recently announced their pregnancy) and another three deciding to walk away. Where to watch: Episodes one to four of Love is Blind UK Season 2 land on Netflix on August 13, followed by episodes five to eight on August 20 and episodes nine to 10 on August 27. Following his cameo in the recent Superman movie, which has soared at the box office this summer, John Cena is back as Chris Smith, aka Peacemaker, a vigilante who fights for peace at any cost. Originally a spin-off of The Suicide Squad film, which was released in 2021 to rave reviews, Peacemaker Season 2 will follow the vigilante hero as he discovers a parallel world where he can live out the life of his dreams — but it means he must confront his traumatic past. The show has been a hit wth TV fans, earning an impressive 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and praised by critics for its wild action scenes, clever twists and humour. Meanwhile, audiences have called it 'compelling', a 'joyride' and 'pure comic-book mayhem'. Where to watch: Peacemaker Season 2 lands on Sky Max and NOW in the UK and HBO Max in the US on August 21, with episodes airing weekly until October 9. It's been an almost two-year wait for the second season of this teen romance drama, which has been compared to Prime Video hit The Summer I Turned Pretty and Netflix comedy Never Have I Ever. If you like love triangles and will-they-won't-they romance, this one's worth checking out. Season one saw 15-year-old Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) move from New York to rural Colorado after losing her family in a tragic accident. More Trending There, she meets the two Walter brothers, Cole (Noah LaLonde) and Alex (Ashby Gentry) — and you can probably take a good guess at some of the teenage drama that ensues. After heading back to New York over the summer, season two sees Jackie return to Colorado with a big decision to make. My Life With the Walter Boys has a disappointing 42% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers criticising its 'generic storylines', but audiences were much more enthused, awarding it a 71% score and hailing the series as 'wholesome' and 'very bingeable'. View More » Where to watch: My Life with the Walter Boys Season 2 arrives on Netflix on August 28. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Netflix show watched 11,000,000 times in one weekend suddenly axed MORE: Bonnie Blue's 'disturbing' Channel 4 documentary causes crisis after outrage from brands MORE: Everyone in the Celebrity SAS 2025 Cast as hit-show returns tonight
Metro
4 hours ago
- Metro
‘It was a slap in the face when Ed Westwick got the role I auditioned for'
Sitting at a booth in Soho Theatre's cafe on a Thursday morning, actor Jassa Ahluwalia tells the story of being out for dinner when he received an email about a job that felt like his 'Hollywood moment'. 'It seemed that everything that I'd been working towards was coming to fruition. The universe had beautifully conspired to land this perfect role in my lap,' the 34-year-old tells Metro. Pulling out his phone and opening his inbox, he leans forward to read the message out loud: 'Character breakdown – this is a large supporting character. Note: It is crucial to the narrative and the character's story arc that Brooke is convincingly accepted in aristocratic circles as white British. The character is currently written as having Indian heritage on his mother's side.' 'They were describing me ,' he recalls. Born to a white English mum and a brown Punjabi dad in 1990, Jassa couldn't believe his luck that the TV pirate series, Sandokan, set in South Asia, was being made and he had a chance to play the role of Lord James Brooke. 'It felt like the acting industry was listening, paying attention and caring,' he remembers, his eyes widening at the memory. His self-tape — a short video where Jassa spoke about his heritage and read lines — led to an invitation for a screen test, and in November 2023, Jassa made his way to Bang Studios, just a stone's throw from where he sits today. 'Even just talking about it, my stomach's remembering the emotion. I was tingling, I was so alive,' the actor says. 'It sounds ridiculous, but I was trying to find ways to stay grounded. They had a miniature Buddha with a little tea light in the loo. I had a moment with it, touching its feet while thinking of how far I'd come to get to where I was. I was saying 'Thank you'.' After hair and makeup, Jassa was guided to a room filled with casting directors and producers, all crowded behind a desk with monitors. Over 30 minutes, he performed a scene under lights and cameras, partly in Punjabi, which was, he says, requested by the room. As the meeting ended with hugs, the word 'perfect' was lobbed around, and Jassa felt things couldn't have gone any better. However, on December 15, he got a rejection email. It praised 'utterly wonderful' Jassa for his 'beautiful work', but told him they weren't going to be progressing with him. When Jassa asked for more detailed feedback, he says he was told there was 'nothing constructive to pass on'. 'It was heartbreaking. I didn't know how it was possible to nail it so hard and still not get the gig,' he admits. As an actor since his teens, Jassa was accustomed to the rejection process, so he picked himself up and moved on. That was, until he read in the press a few months later that the role he had auditioned for — Lord James Brooke — had been given to Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick. It was 'like a slap in the face', remembers Jassa. 'They wanted the guy from Gossip Girl that people knew, and all that specificity and vulnerability that I shared didn't count for anything. The whole experience made me feel unimportant – my mix was just a tick box for a second, but it wasn't actually important. 'A little bit of my love for the industry died at that moment. I thought, 'F**k this, why am I pouring my heart and soul into this business?'' Sandokan is a reboot of an Italian TV series that aired in 1976 and was sold to 85 countries. Fremantle-owned Lux Vide is now putting a new spin on it with Can Yaman taking the lead role. It will air on the Italian state broadcaster RAI and be distributed worldwide. Set in the mid-19th century on the island of Borneo, the native Dayak tribes are dominated by ruthless Brits. Sandokan doesn't initially pick a side, but when he marries the daughter of the British consul, Marianne (Alanah Bloor), he begins to fight against colonial powers with his motley crew. The synopsis teases that pirate hunter Lord James Brooke (Ed Westwick) 'will stop at nothing to capture Sandokan and win Marianne's heart.' Angeliqa Devi, who is Bengali, has been announced as playing Brooke's mother, Hita. Jassa says that 'unless there's been a radical change to the script' Ed's character is still mixed. To Jassa's knowledge, an important part of the plot is that people are made to believe that Hita is a servant, not Brooke's parent. The rejection felt extra painful, admits Jassa, because he struggled with an 'obsessive desperation' to succeed due to a complex relationship with his mixed identity. 'It's no coincidence that I associate performing with a feeling of belonging because of an early happy memory I have of dancing Bhangra as a kid on the streets in India,' he explains with a smile, showing a photo from the trip. 'I was always unconsciously trying to get back to that.' Jassa studied at a subsidised arts program in Leicestershire throughout his school years, which made him feel that an acting career was 'tangibly achievable.' His youthful optimism felt well-placed when he landed a role on the BBC coming-of-age series Some Girls, playing lovable bad boy Rocky in 2012. 'I had a few years of things snowballing with parts in Casualty, Peaky Blinders, Ripper Street and The Whale. I was around a crowd of people, like John Boyega and David Gyasi, who were bubbling then blowing up. I thought it was going to happen for me, and then… it didn't. 'There had been a shift in the industry towards trying to tell more representative stories, but my voice wasn't welcome in that conversation,' he says of the 2010s. 'It was surface-level, productions just wanted to look diverse.' Jassa became increasingly frustrated with a landscape where the role of mixed-race characters felt more like an exercise rather than a thoughtful process, despite being the fastest-growing demographic in the UK. He cites one episode of Line of Duty where they say one of the suspects is mixed race [in the opener of season five, Vihaan Malhotra is asked to describe the woman who has been blackmailing him], 'but they don't say what mix, but everyone is like 'cool, understood'.' In 2019, Jassa felt a desire to take action after a follower responded to a video of him speaking Punjabi on social media, expressing shock at his fluency due to him being 'only half'. The actor quickly replied that he was 'both, not half', which went on to become a popular hashtag, as well as a TEDx Talk, documentary, and a book deal. As he grew more vocal, Jassa also became increasingly keen to incorporate his heritage into his acting. 'I wanted to bring my Punjabi-ness to work, because for years it felt like it was going to limit me,' he explains. 'It wasn't somebody explicitly sitting me down and saying, 'You should never talk about your Punjabi heritage', but the little signals I got were that to get ahead, you need to conform as much as you possibly can.' When asked what needs to change to strip these attitudes, Jassa — who is a member of Equity, the UK's trade union for the performing arts and entertainment industries — has a list ready and reaches into his rucksack to pull out a notebook filled with pages of scribbles. Although, he barely needs to glance at them: equality, finances, and intention need to be addressed, he explains. 'In any recruitment process, you expect people to be treated the same. I was asked in my audition to riff in Punjabi. Was Ed Westwick asked to do that?' Moving to his next point, he says: 'It all comes down to money. We're living in a time where the arts are increasingly under attack, so people in power are making safer choices, which uphold what has gone before. 'We're not getting any radical shift forward in this climate, so audiences are being deprived of incredible, world-changing, creative work from talented people who need to prioritise feeding their families, so leave the industry. 'Ed's involvement was probably a lot easier to justify to the finance team than mine, but we need to be thinking of why we are telling stories. Is it a white presenting mixed character for exotic dramatic intrigue, or because they are exploring an underrepresented part of history with sensitivity and authenticity?' As Jassa gets more passionate in his point-making, his voice shakes, and the actor admits: 'I find it hard to balance my personal emotions with my rational union brain.' However, the reason behind it all is simple, he adds: 'These stories should be told because we should be reflecting the society we live in, so everyone feels seen.' More Trending As for Jassa himself, he's in a happy place and is focused on writing more books, spreading his message further to challenge misconceptions and making changes through his role in the union. As he gets set to cycle off to his next engagement, he says: 'Now that I feel I have found a sense of home within myself, I'm not craving it as much from performance. 'I am no longer content to quietly pass as white, I want to assert my Punjabi heritage. I want mixed people on screen as they are, not as ethnically ambiguous shapeshifters. 'Being a chameleon is part of the joy of being an actor, but I want to play with my true colours.' View More » Metro has contacted Fremantle's Lux Vide for comment . Follow Jassa on Instagram here. Do you have a story you'd like to share? Get in touch by emailing Share your views in the comments below. MORE: I sold a bikini on a preloved site – now I'm wondering who bought it MORE: We went out with London's 'pickpocket hunter' to watch him sniff out thieves MORE: I'm a part time witch and use my powers to get back at my exes
