Benjamin Myers is the winner of this year's Goldsmiths Prize for his novel Cuddy. Established in 2013, The Goldsmiths Prize celebrates the qualities of creative daring and rewards fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.

On winning the prize, Benjamin Myers said: 'It’s a big surprise to win the Goldsmiths Prize. I genuinely didn’t think it was going to be given to my book. It probably sounds a bit ingenuous or a little bit humble but I think it’s such a strange experience being a writer because you exist in isolation for a long period and this book took four years to write and I didn’t show any of it to anyone until it went to my publisher.'

'The books that are chosen [for the Goldsmiths Prize] are challenging, experimental, expansive, interesting, and as a result, the writers of those books offer a very broad section of what’s going on in literature today. I think anyone on the shortlist this year was deserving of the prize so congratulations to all the other writers who were on the shortlist as well.'

Dr Tom Lee, Chair of Judges said: 'Benjamin Myers' Cuddy is a book of remarkable range, virtuosity and creative daring. A millennia-spanning epic told in a multitude of perfectly realised voices, this visionary story of St Cuthbert and the cathedral built in his honour echoes through the ages.  The reader comes away with a renewed and breathless sense of what a novel of this ambition is capable of.'

Tom Gatti, executive editor at The New Statesman said: 'Congratulations to Benjamin Myers for his extraordinary novel Cuddy – a prime example of the sort of ambitious, vital fiction that Goldsmiths and The New Statesman founded the prize to celebrate.'

As the 2023 winner, Benjamin Myers receives £10,000 in prize money.

Find out more about the Goldsmiths Prize here.