Somerset Maugham Award

The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize, which is awarded every year in May by the British Society of Authors Writers' Association of young writers under 35. He is now endowed with £ 12,000 to be distributed to up to four recipients.

The prize was first awarded in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham to enable junior authors with the money to go abroad. Well-known in Germany winners include Doris Lessing ( 1954), VS Naipaul (1961 ), Hugh Thomas (1962 ), John le Carré (1964 ), Angela Carter (1969 ), Susan Hill (1971 ), Martin Amis (1974 ), Ian McEwan (1976 ), Helen Hodgman (1979 ), Julian Barnes (1981 ), Tim Parks (1986 ), AL Kennedy ( 1994), Jonathan Freedland (1999) and Zadie Smith, and Chris Cleave (2006).