Flanagan wins 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction

In the UK, Question 7 by Australian author Richard Flanagan (Knopf) has won the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, worth £50,000 (A$96,097), becoming the first author to win both this prize and the Booker.

‘Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. Exploring the value of life, Flanagan tackles far-ranging, seemingly disparate personal and historical topics, from H G Wells’ affair with Rebecca West, to the atomic bomb, and his own near-death experience, expertly documenting life’s chain reaction: from past to present to future,’ said prize organisers.

Chair of judges Isabel Hilton said: ‘Question 7 is an astonishingly accomplished meditation on memory, history, trauma, love and death—and an intricately woven exploration of the chains of consequence that frame a life. In a year rich in remarkable books, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 spoke to the judges for its outstanding literary qualities and its profound humanity. This compelling memoir ranges from intimate human relations to an unflinching examination of the horrors of the 20th century, reflecting on unanswerable questions that we must keep asking.’

Prize director Toby Mundy described Flanagan’s dual win of the Booker and the Baillie Gifford Prize as ‘an unprecedented double’. ‘It is a staggering achievement, which confirms Richard Flanagan as one of the world’s most significant literary writers.’

Question 7 was also longlisted for the 2024 Prix Médicis and named a finalist in the 2024 Prix Fémina étranger. When asked how he felt about the book’s recognition by fiction and nonfiction awards alike, Flanagan replied to the Guardian: ‘Delighted. Labels are for jam jars.’

Judges selected the winner from a shortlist announced in October and a longlist announced in September. All works of nonfiction by authors of any nationality are eligible for the award, which is the richest prize for nonfiction in the UK.

The winner of last year’s prize was John Vaillant for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (Sceptre).

More information about the prize is available on its website.

Category: Awards Local news