Tariq Goddard


Tariq Goddard is a British novelist and publisher. He has written six novels, the first of which Homage to a Firing Squad, was short-listed for the Whitbread Book Award for First Novel. His first three novels were published by Sceptre. In 2007, he founded the independent publishing company, Zero Books, and is now the publisher of Repeater Books.

Life and career

Goddard was born in London and read philosophy at King's College, London, and Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick and the University of Surrey. In 2002 his first novel, Homage to a Firing Squad, was nominated for the Whitbread Book Award for First Novel. It was also nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize literary award for comic literature. He was included as one of Waterstones' 'Faces of the Future' and the novel, whose film rights where sold, was listed as one of The Observer's Four Debuts of the year.
In 2003 his second novel, Dynamo, was cited as one of the ten best sports novels of all time by The Observer Sports Magazine. The Morning Rides Behind Us, his third novel, was released in 2005, and short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Fiction. In 2010 The Picture of Contented New Wealth, his fourth novel, won The Independent Publishers Award for Horror Writing and he was awarded a development grant by The Royal Literary Fund. The Message, published in 2011 and set in a fictional African state, received Silver at the 2012 Independent Publishers Award for Literary Fiction. His sixth novel Nature and Necessity was published in 2017.
In 2007 Goddard began the imprint Zero Books. In 2014 he and his co-founders left Zero Books and started Repeater Books. He lives on a farm in Wiltshire with his wife and two sons.