We offer our warm congratulations to the winner of the 2025 Ondaatje Prize Carys Davies, who has won the £10,000 award for her novel Clear. On receiving her award, Davies said:
‘Thank you so much to the RSL, the Ondaatje family and this year’s judges. I’d also like to say a huge thank you to the indefatigable Jakob Jakobsen whose extraordinary dictionary of an extinct language allowed me to write this book. According to the UN, one of the 6,700 languages spoken across the world is lost every two weeks – I’m so delighted that this prize can celebrate how we can experience the world through the words we use to perceive it.’
The prize was instituted in 2004 to celebrate outstanding writing that best evokes the spirit of a place. The premise and broad remit of the RSL Ondaatje Prize creates unique lists of outstanding works and authors that would not usually be found sitting side by side. Davies won out after being shortlisted along with five other works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry:
Xan Brooks, The Catchers (Salt Publishing)
Carys Davies, Clear (Granta)
Orlaine McDonald, No Small Thing (Serpents Tail)
Kelly Michels, American Anthem (The Gallery Press)
Jen Stout, Night Train Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia’s War (Polygon)
Yuan Yang, Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in A New China (Bloomsbury)
Davies was announced as winner at a special event held on 15 May at Two Temple Place, London. Among the guests were previous winners of the RSL Ondaatje Prize including Edmund de Waal, Anthony Anaxagorou and James Meek. Another former winner Ruth Gilligan, who took the prize home in 2021, was chair of this year’s judging panel which also featured Charlie Craggs and Roy McFarlane.
‘To me, the RSL Ondaatje Prize is the ultimate celebration of the transportive power of literature,’ she said. ‘In the depths of the 2021 lockdown, when we were all unable to transport ourselves anywhere, I got a call from the Ondaatje judges to say I had won – and I can honestly say it was the happiest moment of my writing career so far. It makes judging this year’s prize even more special.’
Of the winning novel, Gilligan said: ‘Clear is a genuine masterpiece. The sense of place is sublime, island life rendered in exquisite, craggy detail, yet somehow it also manages to be a universal reflection on the meaning of home, of belonging, of family. Davies packs so much into so few pages, but the writing never feels cold or sparse – rather there is a real generosity of spirit here which, by the end, leaves you utterly changed.’
Charlie Craggs said: ‘Clear is beautifully written, with an even more beautiful message, about human connection that’s so needed in the world right now.’
Roy McFarlane added: ‘An island, two men and providence that brings them together. The landscape, language, and weather distils the characters making them magical and memorable. Beautifully written, sparse and barren. A masterclass in storytelling the brevity of words and action and yet in the lull you can continuously feel a storm brewing.’
This is not the first time Carys Davies has won an award from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2011, her short story ‘The Redemption of Galen Pike’ won the RSL V.S. Pritchett Prize. Since then, she has published two novels and two collections of short stories, several of which have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She was made a Fellow of the RSL in 2022.