The Artist : Winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year 2025

Richly evocative of a Provençal summer, Steeds' masterly 1920s-set novel focuses on an enigmatic painter, the young journalist set on penning a piece on him and the artist's niece who harbours an unexpected secret.

Waterstones Book of the Year
Winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2025
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

'The Artist is a gorgeously escapist novel which seamlessly transports the reader to the sticky heat of sun-soaked 1920s Southern France... Atmospheric, elegant and sensory, it is a novel to be fully swept away by.' - Bea Carvalho, Waterstones Head of Books

All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe's world. All Ettie wants is to escape it. The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks Joseph: a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph's curiosity grows . . .

Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.

The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.

About the Author

Lucy is a graduate of both the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She began writing The Artist while living in France, and currently splits her time between London and Amsterdam. The Artist has been listed for the BPA First Novel Award, the Yeovil Literary Prize, the Page Turner Awards, the Fiction Factory First Chapter Competition, and was a Finalist in the Spotlight First Novel Award and the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. Lucy herself has synaesthesia and uses this to play with ways of translating images into words. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters in World Literatures from the University of Oxford.