Stroud-based author Jamila Gavin MBE has won the 2025 Nero Book Award for Children’s Fiction for her latest novel, My Soul, A Shining Tree, writes Jon Collins.
The judges praised the book as “an exceptionally powerful story of three young lives entwined by war, told by a writer of genius, with such vivid prose that it has the quality of poetry.”
Written for readers aged nine and over, My Soul, A Shining Tree is set during the First World War and is inspired by the real-life story of an Indian gunner in the British Army who was awarded the Victoria Cross. The novel is told through multiple perspectives: the gunner himself, a Belgian farm girl, a German teenage cavalry soldier, and a walnut tree that shelters them all.
Jamila Gavin is one of the UK’s most celebrated children’s authors. She won the Whitbread Prize in 2000 for Coram Boy and has received numerous awards for her writing. In 2024, she was appointed MBE for services to children’s literature.
Speaking about her career and inspirations, Jamila said: “Although I never said, ‘When I grow up I want to be a writer,’ I knew that it would always be through writing that I would eventually be able to express the world I was born into. Perhaps because I was born during the Second World War. Perhaps because I was born in India to an Indian father and an English mother, and both my parents were passionate educationists. Perhaps because I witnessed the consequences of social upheaval following both the catastrophe of war in Britain and Partition in India. I was always aware of social issues and history, and this has dominated most of my writing life.
“Although I had no personal experience of the First World War, I felt closely connected to it. My mother’s vivid descriptions stayed with me of how, as a young child, she heard the boots of soldiers marching past her bedroom window on their way to fight in WW1.”
In addition to her writing, Jamila plays a significant role in Stroud’s cultural life. She is a Patron and Trustee of Stroud Arts Festival, one of the oldest arts festival organisations in the UK, and a founding Director of the Stroud Book Festival. Recently, she appeared on stage alongside fellow children’s author Michael Morpurgo, discussing their approaches to writing for young readers.
