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Das and Branigan shortlisted for £25k British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding
The British Academy has revealed the shortlist for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, with Tania Branigan, Nandini Das and Dimitris Xygalatas among the authors up for the £25,000 prize.
Now in its 11th year, the international book prize rewards and celebrates “ground-breaking research-based works of non-fiction that have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of world cultures and the ways in which they interconnect".
This year’s jury of academics and journalists has chosen a shortlist of six “exceptional” books from almost 200 submissions. Shortlisted are Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (Faber & Faber); Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das (Bloomsbury Publishing) and The Violence of Colonial Photography by Daniel Foliard (Manchester University Press).
Also in contention are: Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation by Kris Manjapra (Allen Lane); Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo (Hodder & Stoughton) and Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living by Dimitris Xygalatas (Profile Books).
Chair of this year’s jury professor Charles Tripp, fellow of the British Academy, said: “This 11th year of the British Academy Book Prize has attracted record numbers of entries from across the humanities and social sciences.
“We were greatly impressed by the exceptional quality of writing in this year’s shortlist and the ability of the authors to unearth extraordinary new discoveries and to find new perspectives on old perceptions. With my fellow jury members, we hope that readers will be inspired to explore the shortlist and thereby to discover something new about the world.”
Tripp is joined on the 2023 jury by professor Madawi Al-Rasheed FBA, visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics; professor Rebecca Earle FBA, food historian and professor of history at the University of Warwick; Fatima Manji, award-winning Channel 4 News broadcaster and journalist and professor Gary Younge Hon FBA, the award-winning author, broadcaster and professor of sociology at the University of Manchester.
The 2023 shortlisted writers will be brought together for a special event on Monday 30th October at the British Academy, in partnership with London Review Bookshop, and chaired by journalist Rosie Goldsmith. The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced at an award ceremony on Tuesday 31st October. Each of the shortlisted writers will receive £1,000. Both events will be livestreamed.
The winner in 2022 was Alia Trabucco Zerán for When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold. After winning the prize, her UK publisher, And Other Stories, reported a sales uplift of 132%. Worldwide interest in When Women Kill continued to grow and, subsequently, film and TV rights have been optioned. Rights have also been sold in Brazil to Fosforo and in China to The Writers Publishing House Company Ltd, adding to previous deals where French rights were sold to Laffont and German rights to Hanser Verlag.
