Congratulations to Jamila Gavin, whose ‘exceptionally powerful’ historical novel My Soul, A Shining Tree (Farshore) was declared the winner of the Children’s Fiction category in the Nero Book Awards 2025.

Based on the true story of Khudadad Khan, an Indian gunner fighting with the British Army during WWI and the first British Indian soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross, My Soul, A Shining Tree is told from four perspectives: Khudadad Khan; Lotte, a Belgian farmgirl; Ernst, a German teenage cavalry soldier; and the walnut tree that shelters them all on a ridge near Ypres.

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.’

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. Gavin talks about her writing and the inspiration for My Soul, A Shining Tree in this exclusive interview for Books for Keeps.

The Nero Book Awards were set up in 2023 to celebrate the craft of great writing across four award categories: 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.

Commenting on this year’s awards, Gerry Ford, Founder and Group CEO of Caffè Nero said: ‘The Nero Book Awards have gone from strength to strength in the past two years and our winners for 2025 are of incredible quality. The judges had a difficult job deciding on the best in each category, with so many fantastic books published this year. Their selection 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. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on 4th March.

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)