We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize. Diana McCaulay won the £10,000 award for her novel A House for Miss Pauline.
The prize was created in 2004 to celebrate outstanding writing that best evokes the spirit of a place.
McCaulay said: ‘To evoke the spirit of a place has been the animating intention of all my novels and stories.’ On receiving her award, she added: ‘My character Miss Pauline, who is 99 years old, has a saying: ‘Rest me down easy, because I am a cracked plate’. Tonight I feel a bit like a cracked plate. This is an amazing honour. I have known of this prize since its inception. I cannot believe I am standing here in front of you.’
Diana McCaulay is an award-winning Jamaican writer and environmental activist, resident on the island. She has written six published novels and numerous short stories and articles. She won the Commonwealth Short Story prize twice, in 2012 and 2022, and is the founder of the Jamaica Environment Trust.
McCaulay won after being shortlisted along with five other works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry:
A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay (Dialogue Books / John Murray Press)
Greyhound by Joanna Pocock (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Helm by Sarah Hall (Faber)
Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal (Serpent’s Tail)
The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine (Sceptre Books)
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet (Hutchinson Heinemann)
McCaulay was announced as winner at a special event held on 1 June at Two Temple Place, London. Welcoming the guests, best-selling author Elif Shafak, President of the RSL, said: ‘The RSL Ondaatje Prize is one of our most treasured literary celebrations. It is given to a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. It is unique in the way in which it celebrates the spirit of a place. That sense of belonging is essential to all human beings. It is existential. We want to extend our thanks to Sir Christopher Ondaatje and the Ondaatje family for their support of this prize.
Ekow Eshun was chair of this year’s judging panel, which also featured Claire Armitstead and Emma Dabiri.
Eshun said: “All of these works are profound, poetic and moving. This is a prize that honours works that evoke the spirit of place, and we took very seriously the notion of spirit. The works we felt were most powerful and significant were works that evoked being and sensibility, works that spoke of the psyche as much as the physical.’
Of the winning novel, Dabiri said: ‘Humorous, horrific, poignant and profound, the past is far from finished in A House for Miss Pauline, Diana McCaulay’s richly evocative novel about inheritances in multitude of forms, and the afterlife of slavery in Jamaica.’
Armitstead said: ‘An evocative and powerful novel of belonging, with a fabulously eccentric protagonist, which complicates everything we assume about colonial history in all the right ways.’
