Funder wins Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger

Anna Funder has won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in the nonfiction category for the French translation of Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life (Hamish Hamilton).

The book was translated to French by Carine Chichereau as L’Invisible Madame Orwell and published by Éditions Héloïse D’Ormesson.

In Wifedom, Funder gives a voice to Eileen O’Shaughnessy, the wife of Nineteen Eighty-Four author George Orwell. The publisher said, ‘Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder creates a breathtakingly intimate portrait of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. Wifedom is a galvanising account of how a woman can be buried first by domesticity, and then by history, and an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere today.’

Funder said: ‘It was living in France as a six-year-old that I discovered that language was magic, it could cast spells and create worlds and it could let you into them. It can even make people who have been rendered invisible by history be seen.’ She added: ‘I’m so grateful to the judges, my publisher Heloise d’Ormesson, my agent Sarah Chalfant, and most of all my children, who let me write about them, and my husband, Craig Allchin, who makes it all possible.’

In France, Wifedom has been shortlisted for the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis and the ELLE Grand Prix des Lectrices. In the UK, the book was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, while in Australia, the book won the biography of the year award at the Australian Book Industry Awards, the adult nonfiction award at the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards, and was shortlisted for the Nib Literary Award.

The Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize) is an annual award established in 1948 to recognise outstanding foreign literature translated into French in two categories: fiction and nonfiction. Hisham Matar won in the fiction category for My Friends (Viking).

Category: Awards Local news