Baillie Gifford Prize marks twenty fifth anniversary with Winner of Winners prize, 6 books compete

Books that discover topics from William Shakespeare and The Beatles to the lure of Mount Everest and life inside one of many world’s most secretive states are competing to be named the all-time winner of Britain’s main nonfiction e book prize.

The Baillie Gifford Prize is marking its twenty fifth yr with a Winner of Winners prize. Three American writers, two from Canada and one from Britain are on the shortlist introduced Thursday for the 25,000 pound ($30,000) trophy.

The prize was launched in 1999 to reward English-language books from any nation in present affairs, historical past, politics, science, sport, journey, biography, autobiography and the humanities.

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Judges have chosen six of the 24 previous winners of the award — recognized till 2015 because the Samuel Johnson Prize — as finalists for the one-off accolade. The winner can be introduced April 27 at a ceremony in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Author Patrick Radden Keefe testifies earlier than a House Oversight Committee listening to on Capitol Hill, on June 8, 2021, in Washington. The Baillie Gifford Prize is marking its twenty fifth yr with a Winner of Winners prize. Keefe is likely one of the six finalists who’ve an opportunity to win the prize. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

The eclectic shortlist consists of cultural kaleidoscope “One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time” by Craig Brown, the one U.Ok. author on the listing. Books by Canadians are Wade Davis’ mountaineering odyssey “Into the Silence” and Margaret MacMillan’s historical past of the post-World War I peace talks, “Paris 1919.”

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The U.S. finalists are Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea”; Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain,” concerning the Sackler household and its hyperlinks to the opioid disaster; and James Shapiro’s “1599: A Year within the Life of William Shakespeare.”

Just two of the six books are by girls, reflecting a historic imbalance in nonfiction publishing that prize organizers say is being rectified. In the previous decade, 40% of the prize winners have been girls.

Editor Jason Cowley, chair of the judging panel stated that regardless of their disparate matters, “there’s a household resemblance” among the many six books.

He stated the works mix literary distinction with “a form of formal innovation.”

“All the books are superb at conveying what Hilary Mantel known as the atmospheric stress of the instances,” he stated.