Peter James, Rose Tremain, Nick Coleman, John Coates, Mohammed Hanif and Thomas Wright make up the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

The £25,000 prize is being competed for by an even split of ficton and non-fiction authors.

Clare Matterson, Director of Medical Humanities and Engagement at the Wellcome Trust, explained that “One of the key aims of this prize is to reach out to audiences who are not normally engaged with medical science so I’m delighted to see that this shortlist lends itself to such a wide readership.”

The list in full is:

John Coates, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

Nick Coleman, The Train in the Night

Mohammed Hanif, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Peter James, Perfect People

Rose Tremain, Merivel: A Man of his Time

Thomas Wright, Circulation

Shortlisted writer Rose Tremain today commented at The Cheltenham Literature Festival that she was surprised to be nominated for the prize which aims to celebrate medicine in literature, “I feel it’s a bit of a fraud – because the amount I actually know about medicine is not very much!”

The 2009 winner was Keeper by Andrea Gillies who we also talked to today at Cheltenham about her new novel.

The winner will be announced on 7th November.

Find out at http://www.wellcomebookprize.org