‘Language City’ wins 2024 British Academy Book Prize

In the UK, US author writer Ross Perlin has won the £25,000 (A$48,543) British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues (Atlantic), reports the Bookseller.

In Language City, Perlin ‘writes engagingly of the history of migration into New York and of the languages and cultures that came to the city, overwhelming the Lenape speakers who were the original inhabitants of the territory’, said the prize organisers. ‘He brings this linguistic mix alive in the present by following the personal stories of six remarkable speakers of endangered languages to fully understand the resilience of their communities and the richness of their languages. Language City is not only a story about New York City, but about all great metropolises. It is one that has global resonance.’

Perlin is a linguist and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, and author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy (Verso) about unpaid work and youth economics. He has written for the New York Times, Guardian, Harper’s and the literary magazine n+1.

Established in 2013, the British Academy Book Prize was created by the British Academy to celebrate works of nonfiction that contribute to ‘global cultural understanding and illuminate the interconnections and divisions that shape cultural identity worldwide’.

Each of the shortlisted writers receive £1000.

Last year’s winner was Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire (Nandini Das, Bloomsbury).

Category: International awards International news