Nero Book Awards 2025 winners announced
Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Category: Book Awards
Jamila Gavin's 'exceptionally powerful' historical novel My Soul, A Shining Tree (Farshore) has won the Children's Fiction category of the Nero Book Awards 2025.
Winners of the remaining categories included: Fiction Category Winner 2025 Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking); Debut Fiction Category Winner 2025 A Family Matter by Claire Lynch (Chatto & Windus); Non-Fiction Category Winner 2025 Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape). The overall winner of the Nero Book Awards 2025 will be announced at a ceremony in London on 4th March.
Children's Category shortlist 2025
My Soul, A Shining Tree was selected from a shortlist of four titles by a panel of judges made up of children's authors, reviewers and booksellers who said: 'Only a writer of genius could tell a story on this scale in fewer than 200 pages with such vivid prose it has the quality of poetry.'
My Soul a Shining Tree is based on the true story of Indian WWI gunner and recipient of the Victoria Cross, Khudadad Khan, the story is told from four perspectives: Lotte, a Belgian farmgirl whose village is the flashpoint for a battle; Ernst, a German teenage cavalry soldier whose grandiose dreams of war lie in tatters; Khudadad Khan, the gunner fighting with the British Army; and the walnut tree that shelters them all on a ridge near Ypres.
ReadingZone review: "The story is full of historic detail, seamlessly woven through the action, enriching knowledge and understanding of these events. Such a powerful and emotive book is a must-read." Sue, ReadingZone. Read a chapter from My Soul, A Shining Tree.
Gavin is a British-Indian writer who was born in the foothills of the Himalayas and moved to England with her family after the war. She has written a number of acclaimed novels, including Coram Boy (Farshore), which won the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year Award in 2000.
The Nero Book Awards, created in 2023, 'celebrate the craft of great writing and the joy of reading', pointing readers to exceptional books. There are four categories in the award: Children's Fiction (9-15), Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction. The awards are open to books first published in English in the UK or Ireland in the previous year.
Gerry Ford, founder and group CEO of Caffè Nero, said the judges' selections for this year's award "epitomises what we look for with the Nero Book Awards - outstanding writing, incredible storytelling, and the books you most want to press into the hands of others".
A final judging panel made up of award-winning author Nick Hornby, BBC correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti, and novelist and playwright Daisy Goodwin will now consider all four category winners before choosing one title to be crowned the winner of the Nero Gold Prize.
