‘He was destined for this award’: China Miéville wins Goldsmiths prize for 1,200-page novel

The Rouse, which took its author two decades to complete, was praised by judges as ‘exuberant, overflowing’

China Miéville has won the £10,000 Goldsmiths prize for The Rouse, a 1,264-page epic that is part paranormal thriller, part historical saga moving through decades of British imperial and cold war history.

The win, announced at a ceremony in London on Wednesday, makes The Rouse the longest novel to take the prize since it was launched in 2013 to reward fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”.

The novelist Francis Spufford, who chaired the judges, said all the books on the shortlist were excellent, but “it seemed only right to give this year’s Goldsmiths prize to the one that, in terms of ambition, bold use of history…