Guardian First Book Award Longlist

Book prize list spans centuries and species by John Ezard, Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian
'Vigorous, engaged and elegant' works on longlist
Shortlist for Guardian award due in November

The contenders

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
Carrie Tiffany, above (Picador), fiction

Harbor
Lorraine Adams (Portobello), fiction

John Donne: The Reformed Soul
John Stubbs (Viking), biography

Lonesome George: The Lives and Loves of a Conservation Icon
Henry Nicholls (Palgrave Macmillan), natural history

A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveller
Jason Roberts (Simon & Schuster), biography

Running for the Hills
Horatio Clare (John Murray), memoir

Poppy Shakespeare
Clare Allan (Bloomsbury), fiction

Waiting for the Night-Rowers
Roger Moulson (Enitharmon), poetry

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Yiyun Li (4th Estate), stories

In the Country of Men
Hisham Matar (Viking), fiction