Branigan, Turner and Cooper announced as finalists for the 2023 Cundill History Prize

Tania Branigan, foreign leader writer for the Guardian, and Kate Cooper, professor of history at Royal Holloway, University of London, have been announced as the finalists for the 2023 Cundill History Prize. They are joined by James Morton Turner, professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and will each receive $10,000 (£8,220).

The three finalists are in the running for the $75,000 prize (£61,610), the richest for a work of non-fiction in English. Philippa Levine, this year’s chair of the jury, made the announcement via the social media channels of the prize, which is administered by McGill University. 

Branigan is in the running for In Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (Faber), while Turner was selected as a finalist for Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future (University of Washington Press). Cooper is competing for the prize with In Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions (Basic Books).

Levine said: “Tania Branigan’s compelling and chilling dive into the effects – past and present – of living through China’s Cultural Revolution reveals how the scars of that tempestuous history continue to resonate even now. Kate Cooper helps us think about the ancient world in new and unexpected ways, tracing the lives of the women who influenced St Augustine. And in Charged, James Morton Turner brings a lightness of touch to an often technical history, and shows us why we urgently need to understand technology’s past if we aim to harness its future.”

After a summer reading, the 2023 panel — comprising Marie Favereau, Eve M Troutt Powell, Sol Serrano, Coll Thrush and Adam Gopnik — decided which three books on their shortlist of eight best met the key Cundill criteria of craft, communication and consequence. All three finalists will travel to Montreal for the Cundill History Prize Festival, taking place on the McGill campus in Montreal between 7th and 8th November, where they will appear on a panel together for the Cundill Forum.

The prize is open to books from across the world, regardless of the author’s nationality, as well as works translated into English. Each year, more than 300 titles are submitted by trade and academic publishers from around the world. Last year, Tiya Miles won the prize for All That She Carried (Random House).