First and foremost

The Guardian First Book Award longlist came out today - 10 books, a mix of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, all by first time authors. Many of the books on the list have already done well this year - Diana Evans' story of identical twins, 26A, won the Orange award for new writing; Alexander Masters' Stuart: A Life Backwards and Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found were both shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize; Tash Aw is already on the Booker longlist for The Harmony Silk Factory, and Nick Laird is in contention for the Forward prize for best first collection with his debut, To a Fault. The shortlist will be announced on November 3; in the meantime, read reviews and extracts from the longlisted books on our special report.