Amberley's Hajari wins Colby Award

Nisid Hajari, an author at independent publisher Amberley Publishing, has won the $5,000 2016 William E Colby Award for his book, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition.

The Colby prize, launched in 1999, its namesake a former CIA director, is awarded annually by Norwich University to a first-time author in recognition of a work of fiction or non-fiction that has made a "major contribution" to the understanding of "military history, intelligence operations, or international affairs".

Midnight’s Furies covers the 1947 partition of India and the violence that surrounded that event. It was described as “noteworthy, superbly readable, and very timely” by the executive director of the Colby Symposium, Carlo D’Este, who is himself the author of several books including biographies of Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Winston Churchill. He added Midnight's Furies explores not only one of the “most historic events of the twentieth century but one that has powerful implications for the vital interests of the United States in one of the most unstable and dangerous regions of the world, where extremism and terrorism prevail”.

Hajari oversees Asia coverage for Bloomberg View, the editorial page of Bloomberg News; he writes editorials on Asian politics and economics and edits Bloomberg's opinion columns and commentary from the region. Prior to working at Bloomberg, Hajari spent 10 years as a top editor at Newsweek International and Newsweek magazine in New York. He currently lives in Singapore.

He said: "I am absolutely thrilled to be named the recipient of the 2016 Colby Award. To join the company of such distinguished military and historical writers as Jon Meacham and Dexter Filkins is a tremendous honor, and it's particularly gratifying that the judges chose to highlight a subject that may be unfamiliar to many American readers.” 

Winners of the Colby book award receive a $5,000 author honorarium provided through a grant from the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation. The award and honorarium will be presented to Hajari at Norwich University during the 2016 William E. Colby Military Writers’ Symposium at the “Meet the Authors” Dinner on 7th April. Open to the public, the 2016 Symposium will take place 6th-7th April, and includes a panel discussion and book signing. 

The Colby Award selection committee comprises William E. Butterworth III, the author of more than 150 books, including more than 50 New York Times bestsellers; Karl Marlantes, a 2011 Colby Award recipient for Matterhorn (Corvus), since publishing What It Is Like To Go To War (Atlantic Books); Jerry Morelock, prize-winning military historian; John A. Glusman, v.p. and editor-in-chief of W. W. Norton and Company, a 2007 Colby Award winner; Frederick J. Chiaventone, a retired cavalry officer, novelist, screenwriter, and military historian, who won the 1999 inaugural Colby Award - his has also been nominated for a Pulitzer - and military historian and biographer D’Este.

Previous recipients of the Colby Award include Thomas McKenna, James Bradley, Nathaniel Fick, Col. Jack Jacobs, Dexter Filkins, Marcus Luttrell, John Glusman, Karl Marlantes, and Logan Beirne.