Books by Talve-Goodman and Goldberg shortlisted for the £4k Wingate Literary Prize

Books by Adina Talve-Goodman, Paul Goldberg and Janet Malcolm have been shortlisted for the £4,000 Wingate Literary Prize.

Now in its 47th year, the annual prize, run in association with the Jewish Community Centre, JW3, is awarded to the best book that manages "to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader". The six books featured on the shortlist aim to reflect the "depths of Jewishness and Jewish life".

The two shortlisted works of fiction and four non-fiction titles cover everything from chronic illness and photography to the Cold War and cooking.

Talve-Goodman’s "tender and lyrical" Your Hearts, Your Scars (Bellevue Literary Press) is featured on this year’s list, alongside Goldberg’s The Dissident (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), described as an "original, sharp mystery murder". 

Malcolm’s "minor-key memoir of an artistic life", Still Pictures (Granta Books), is also featured on this year’s list, as is Michael Twitty’s Kosher Soul (Harper 360) a "cross-genre exploration of the many layers of Black Jewishness". 

Elizabeth McCracken is in the running for the award for The Hero of this Book (Jonathan Cape), which is described as a "moving elegy of a writer’s relationship with her larger-than-life mother". The final book on the list is One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank (Souvenir Press), which "evokes La Juderia in Rhodes before the Second World War" and is told from the perspective of a survivor.

This year’s judging panel is comprised of chair Benjamin Markovits, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Natasha Solomons and Rabbi Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz.

"After much consideration, our list reflects the books that had the most passionate support from each of us," the judges said. "We were all very aware of the remit of the prize – its aim to showcase books of Jewish interest to the general reader […] There is no single way of being Jewish. Instead, Jewish identity flowers through a myriad of meanings, a range of which are highlighted in these shortlisted books."

The Wingate Prize winner will be decided in February, followed by an event at JW3 on 13th March 2024.