The Bee Sting by UEA alumna Paul Murray has been selected as a Times Best Novel of the Year. Paul (pictured) graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2001. He published his first novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes in 2003. This was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Kerry Irish Fiction Award. His second novel Skippy Dies was published in 2009 and was nominated for numerous awards, including the Costa Novel Award, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing, and (in the United States) the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. His third novel The Mark and the Void was published in 2015 and was the co-winner of the 2016 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. Most recently, The Bee Sting was selected as a finalist of the Kirkus Prize in the fiction category and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It also won this year’s An Post Irish Book Eason Novel of the Year and is currently shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards.