The Dundee International Book Prize is a biennial competition open to new authors, offering a prize of £

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

10,000 and publication by Polygon Books. It is organised in Dundee

Dundee

Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

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The prize was announced in 1996 and was, initially, for unpublished manuscripts of novel length set in the city. The initiative, the brainchild of Carol Pope, then University of Dundee

University of Dundee

The University of Dundee is a university based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee on eastern coast of the central Lowlands of Scotland and with a small number of institutions elsewhere....

 Press Officer, galvanised the local writing scene and the final tally of 84 completed entries included many from the local area.

2000

The winning novel, Tumulus, was described by the judging panel, which included award-winning playwright Liz Lochhead, as "a tour-de-force". It was a surprising novel, avoiding the obvious Dundee cultural icons, which played upon the concept of Dundee's celebration of its own cultural status. The novel was, loosely, a mystery, utilising two milieus, 1970s Dundee and the present day and is full of deft humour and black sarcasm as well as many scabrous tales of bohemian life, squalor, flared jeans, rock music and 'dope' etc. Critics were impressed and it was accorded a mention alongside fiction by such contemporary urban Scots writers as Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...

, Michel Faber

Michel Faber

Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of fiction. He writes in English.Faber was born in The Hague, Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967...

, Toni Davidson and Alan Warner

Alan Warner

Alan Warner , a Scottish novelist, grew up in Connel, near Oban.He is the author of six novels: the acclaimed Morvern Callar , winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; These Demented Lands , winner of the Encore Award; The Sopranos , winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Man...

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2002

The second prize, awarded in 2002, went to another local writer, Claire-Marie Watson, for her novel The Curewife, a historical fiction loosely based upon the tale of the city's last witch, Grissel Jaffray.

2005

Malcolm Archibald was the 2005 winner for Whales for the Wizard, another historical fiction based on Dundee's seafaring tradition. Two other writers, Claire Collison and Catherine Czerkawska also had their novels published. The prize was then redesignated the 'Dundee International Book Prize', to reflect the increasing interest in it from across the world.