Fortune

"I’m not one for technology on the whole, but Amanda Smyth’s novel, which describes the dash and bravado of the early days of drilling for oil in Trinidad, with all the intricacies of machines and derricks and oil pipes, is completely absorbing. Smyth, herself a Trinidadian, evokes the ‘creaking forests’ where the ‘frogs sang their sirens’ with absolute assurance. Her cast of risk-taking oilmen, business investors, anxious landowners and the glamorous woman at the heart of the central love story, hurtle inexorably to the thrilling climax. Fortune is more than an adventure story. It shows the turmoil that the discovery of oil inevitably causes to the settled societies that experience it. I think it’s true to say that for a long time ‘historical fiction’ meant, in the minds of many people, romantic Regency novels , all bosoms and bonnets, a genre particularly enjoyed by women. We’ve moved way beyond that old stereotype now. There is also, perhaps, a perception that a historical novel must be set at a distant time in the past, but the Walter Scott Prize takes as its guide the title of Walter Scott’s first historical novel: Waverley; or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since. This means that this year any novel is eligible where the majority of the action is set before 1962."