Shortlist 2022
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Margo Jefferson: Constructing a Nervous System
This intimate and innovative memoir shows how, from Josephine Baker’s radiant transformations, to Willa Cather’s aesthetics of whiteness, we can find space in cultures that will not make room for us. Margo Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and the author of the celebrated memoir Negroland.
She lives in the USA. -
Graeme Macrae Burnet: Case Study
A twisting and often wickedly humorous work of crime fiction that meditates on the nature of
sanity, identity and truth itself. Graeme Macrae Burnet is the author of four novels, including the Booker Prize-shortlisted His Bloody Project. He lives in Scotland. -
Preti Taneja: Aftermath
Usman Khan was a convicted terrorist who, on release from prison, went on to kill two people. Preti Taneja had taught Khan in prison – one of his victims was her colleague. This book is an attempt to rebuild faith in human compassion, and a recommitment to activism and radical hope. Preti Taneja’s first
novel We That Are Young won the Desmond Elliot Prize. She is a professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University. -
David Whitehouse: About a Son
A moving exploration of love and loss. Part true crime, part memoir it tells the story of the shocking 2015 murder of 20-year-old Morgan Hehir in Nuneaton, the emotional repercussions, and the failures that enabled it to take place. David Whitehouse is the award-winning author of three acclaimed novels and is a journalist and screenwriter. He is originally from Nuneaton.
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Lea Ypi: Free: Coming of Age at the End of History
An engrossing memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval in Albania, one of the most isolated countries on earth, where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. In 1990 the fall of the Berlin Wall changed everything, and Lea found herself questioning what freedom really meant. Lea Ypi is a professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics.
Past Shortlists
2021
A Ghost in the Throat
Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Tramp Press
A Little Devil in America
Hanif Abdurraqib
Penguin Press
Come Join Our Disease
Sam Byers
Faber
Luckenbooth
Jenni Fagan
William Heinemann
Mrs Death Misses Death
Salena Godden
Canongate
Sea State
Tabitha Lasley
HarperCollins
2020
Notes Made While Falling
Jenn Ashworth
Goldsmiths Press
Rainbow Milk
Paul Mendez
Little, Brown Book Group
Motherwell
Deborah Orr
Orion Publishing Group
This Is Not Propaganda
Peter Pomerantsev
Faber & Faber
My Name Is Why
Lemn Sissay
Canongate Books
Three Women
Lisa Taddeo
Bloomsbury Publishing
2019
For the Good Times
David Keenan
Faber
Girl, Woman, Other
Bernardine Evaristo
Hamish Hamilton
Heads of the Colored People
Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Chatto & Windus
Lanny
Max Porter
Faber
The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker
Penguin
This Brutal House
Niven Govinden
Dialogue
2018
Census
Jesse Ball
Granta Books
H(a)ppy
Nicola Barker
William Heinemann
In Our Mad and Furious City
Guy Gunaratne
Tinder Press
Crudo
Olivia Laing
Pan Macmillan/Picador
The Cost of Living
Deborah Levy
Hamish Hamilton
I’ll be Gone in the Dark
Michelle McNamara
Faber & Faber
2017
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
Kapka Kassabova
Granta Books
This is Memorial Device
David Keenan
Faber & Faber
The Long Drop
Denise Mina
Harvill Secker
This is the Place to Be
Lara Pawson
CB Editions
First Love
Gwendoline Riley
Granta Books
Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile
Adelle Stripe
Wrecking Ball Press
2016
A Woman on the Edge of Time
Jeremy Gavron
Scribe
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
Olivia Laing
Canongate
Eileen
Ottessa Moshfegh
Jonathan Cape
Anatomy of a Soldier
Harry Parker
Faber and Faber
All That Man Is
David Szalay
Jonathan Cape
And the Sun Shines Now: How Hillsborough and the Premier League Changed Britain
Adrian Tempany
Faber and Faber
2015
In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile
Dan Davies
Quercus
Midland
Honor Gavin
Penned in the Margins
Noon Tide Toll
Romesh Gunesekera
Granta Books
Original Rockers
Richard King
Faber & Faber
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible
Peter Pomerantsev
Faber & Faber
2014
The Valley
Richard Benson
Bloomsbury
The Kills
Richard House
Picador
The Wake
Paul Kingsnorth
Unbound
The Trip to Echo Spring
Olivia Laing
Canongate
American Interior
Gruff Rhys
Hamish Hamilton
The Free
Willy Vlautin
Faber & Faber
2013
How I Killed Margaret Thatcher
Anthony Cartwright
Tindal Street Press
The Footballer Who Could Fly
Duncan Hamilton
Century
People Who Eat Darkness
Richard Lloyd Parry
Jonathan Cape
Pig Iron
Benjamin Myers
Blue Moose Books
Myra, Beyond Saddleworth
Jean Rafferty
Wild Wolf Publishing
