# Adam Foulds

Adam Samuel James Foulds FRSL (/ˈfoʊldz/ FOHLDZ; born 8 October 1974) is a British novelist and poet.

## Biography

Foulds was educated at Bancroft's School, read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford under Craig Raine, and graduated with an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2001.
In 2007, Foulds published his first book, The Truth About These Strange Times. The novel, which is set in the present day, is concerned in part with the World Memory Championships.
In 2008, Foulds published a substantial narrative poem entitled The Broken Word, described by the critic Peter Kemp as a "verse novella". It is a fictional version of some events during the Mau Mau Uprising. Writing in The Guardian, David Wheatley suggested that "The Broken Word is a moving and pitiless depiction of the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be, and the terrible things we do to defend our place in it".
In 2009, his novel The Quickening Maze was published. Recommending the work in a 'books of the year' survey, novelist Julian Barnes declared: 'Having last year greatly admired Adam Foulds's long poem "The Broken Word", I uncharitably wondered whether his novel The Quickening Maze (Cape) might allow me to tacitly advise him to stick to verse. Some hope: this story of the Victorian lunatic asylum where the poet John Clare and Tennyson's brother Septimus were incarcerated is the real thing. It's not a "poetic novel" either, but a novelistic novel, rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between'.
On 7 January 2010, he was published on the Guardian's "Over by Over" (OBO) coverage of day five of the Third Test of the South Africa v England series at Newlands, Cape Town. Foulds's published email corrected the OBO writer, Andy Bull, who, in the 77th over, posted lines by Donne in reference to Ian Ronald Bell in verse form: "No doubt I won't be the first pedant to let you know that the Donne you quote is in fact from a prose meditation. The experiment in retrofitting twentieth century free verse technique to it is interesting but the line breaks shouldn't really be there."
In 2013 he was included in the Granta list of 20 best young writers.
He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, after marrying Canadian photographer Charla Jones.

## Awards and honours

| Year | Nominated work | Award | Category | Result |
| 2007 | The Truth About These Strange Times | Betty Trask Award | — | Won |
| 2007 | The Truth About These Strange Times | Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award | — | Won |
| 2008 | The Broken Word | John Llewellyn Rhys Prize | — | Shortlisted |
| 2008 | The Broken Word | Costa Book Awards | Poetry | Won |
| 2009 | The Broken Word | Somerset Maugham Award | — | Won |
| 2009 | The Broken Word | Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award | — | Shortlisted |
| 2009 | The Quickening Maze | Booker Prize | — | Shortlisted |
| 2009 | The Quickening Maze | Encore Award | — | Won |
| 2010 | The Quickening Maze | Walter Scott Prize | — | Shortlisted |
| 2010 | Himself | Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature | — | Honored |
| 2011 | The Quickening Maze | European Union Prize for Literature | — | Won |
| 2013 | — | Granta Best of Young British Novelists (Granta) | — | Won |
| 2015 | In the Wolf's Mouth | Walter Scott Prize | — | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | Dream Sequence | Giller Prize | — | Longlisted |

## Selected bibliography

* 2007: The Truth About These Strange Times
* 2008: The Broken Word
* 2009: The Quickening Maze
* 2014: In the Wolf's Mouth
* 2019: Dream Sequence