What Was Lost Was Lost" was the winner in the first novel category of the Costa Book Awards. O'Flynn received a £5,000 prize. It was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award. The Costa Book Awards' judging panel, chaired by Joanna Trollope, praised the novel for "blending humour and pathos in a cleverly constructed and absorbing mystery." They described the novel as inventive, compelling, and poignant. "What Was Lost" was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. It was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. It won the Jelf Group First Novel Award
In the Light of What We Know shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014 and nominated for the Folio Prize 2015. The author was shortlisted for New Writer of the Year award at the National Book Awards (UK) 2014. In the Light of What We Know In the Light of What We Know is the debut novel of Zia Haider Rahman. First published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the novel was released in the spring of 2014 to international critical acclaim and earned its author the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain's oldest literary prize. and the inaugural International Ranald McDonald prize 2016. The novel has already been