Orwell Prizes 2024 shortlists announced

In the UK, the shortlists for the 2024 Orwell Prizes for political writing have been announced.

The titles shortlisted for the political writing book prize are:

• The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979–2003 (Steve Coll, Allen Lane)
• A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (Nathan Thrall, Penguin Press)
• Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution (Cat Bohannon, Penguin)
• Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad: A family memoir of miraculous survival (Daniel Finkelstein, William Collins)
• The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the search for democracy in India (Alpa Shah, William Collins)
• Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian invasion and Ukraine’s war of independence (Yaroslav Trofimov, Michael Joseph)
• The Picnic: An escape to freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain (Matthew Longo, Bodley Head)
• Revolutionary Acts: Love & brotherhood in Black gay Britain (Jason Okundaye, Faber)
• We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s lessons in love & disobedience (Lyndsey Stonebridge, Jonathan Cape).

The titles shortlisted for the political fiction book prize are:

• Blackouts (Justin Torres, Granta)
• Caledonian Road (Andrew O’Hagan, Faber)
• The Future Future (Adam Thirlwell, Jonathan Cape)
• James (Percival Everett, Mantle)
• My Friends (Hisham Matar, Viking)
• Ocean Stirrings (Merle Collins, Peepal Tree)
• Orbital (Samantha Harvey, Jonathan Cape)
• Ordinary Human Failings (Megan Nolan, Vintage).

The annual awards are presented to works that come closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’, and include five categories, including fiction and nonfiction book prizes, a journalism prize, a prize for exposing Britain’s social evils, and a new prize for reporting homelessness. The winner of each category, announced on 27 June, will receive £3000 (A$5780).

More information about the award and this year’s shortlists is on the prize website.

Category: International news