British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding unveils shortlist of six

Six books have been shortlisted for the £25,000 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, including Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray) and The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 by Marcy Norton (Harvard University Press).

Also up for the prize are Ed Conway for Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future (WH Allen); The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & Its Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell (Viking); Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues by Ross Perlin (Grove Press UK) and Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare by Annabel Sowemimo (Profile Books/Wellcome Collection).

Now in its 12th year, the international book prize rewards and celebrates “ground-breaking works of non-fiction that have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of world cultures and their interactions, and are grounded in rigorous and high-quality research".

The 2024 judging panel is comprised of Professor Charles Tripp (chair), professor Rebecca Earle, food historian and professor of History at the University of Warwick; the former BBC foreign correspondent Bridget Kendall; journalist and broadcaster Ritula Shah; and professor of comparative religion and philosophy at Lancaster University, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad.

Tripp said: “This year we were greatly impressed by the quality of writing and the depth of research, but also by the lengths our writers are prepared to go to highlight urgent global issues and to honour those who have made a difference. At a time when it feels as if global cultural understanding is somewhat lacking, we hope the British Academy Book Prize and these six books will play a part in changing the way we perceive our shared world."

The winner of the 2024 prize will be announced at an award ceremony on Tuesday 22nd October. Each of the shortlisted writers will receive £1,000. The 2023 winner was Nandini Das for Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire (Bloomsbury).