US$75,000 Cundill History Prize 2018 shortlist announced

In Canada, the shortlist has been announced for the Cundill History Prize, which rewards ‘the best history writing in English’.

The shortlisted titles are:

• Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (Anne Applebaum, Penguin)
• Grant (Ron Chernow, Head of Zeus)
• Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Caroline Fraser, Fleet)
• Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World (Joshua Freeman, W W Norton)
• A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War (Tim Grady, Yale University Press)
• The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (Maya Jasanoff, HarperCollins)
• The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and The Emergence of Modern Europe (David I Kertzer, Oxford University Press)
• A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America (Sam White, Harvard University Press).

Four Pulitzer Prize winners—Anne Applebaum, Ron Chernow, Caroline Fraser and David I Kertzer—are among the shortlisted authors.

Three finalists will be announced on 31 October, and the winner, awarded US$75,000 (A$106,330), will be announced in Québec on 15 November. Two runners-up will each receive US$10,000 (A$14,180).

Administered by McGill University in Montreal, the Cundill Prize is awarded annually to an individual from any country for a book that has had or is likely to have ‘a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history’. For more information about the prize, visit the university’s website here.

Category: International news