Keefe to give away £10k FT McKinsey prize money due to sponsorship

Author Patrick Radden Keefe will give away the £10,000 prize he was awarded as a shortlistee for the Financial Times and McKinsey Book of the Year Award because the sponsor provided advice on selling opioid painkiller OxyContin.

Keefe's book Empire of Pain (Picador) explores the opioid addiction crisis, and focuses on the role of the Sackler family.

about the "irony" of the award being sponsored by consultancy firm McKinsey, which had previously advised the Sacklers and its company Purdue on sales of OxyContin, and in February agreed to pay nearly $600m in settlement for its role in the crisis. 

He said this “made for some pretty fraught emotions”. He added: “On the one hand, it means a great deal to me to see this book recognised. On the other, I could not take part in the lovely gala dinner and not at least acknowledge the proverbial elephant.”

Keefe said he had chosen to donate the money he received as a shortlisted author to the charity Odyssey House, which works to help people recover from drug and alcohol abuse.

The author also pointed out that the award ceremony on 2nd December was held in the National Gallery, where there is a gallery sponsored by the Sackler family, called the Sackler Room. 

Radden Keefe stressed he believes the jury was "100% independent" and not in any way influenced by the prize's sponsor but argued: "Given the themes of the book, it would have been hypocritical, to put it mildly, for me to put on a suit and go to a fancy gallery adjacent to the Sackler room and drink champagne and vie for a prize sponsored by McKinsey and politely refrain from any mention of the above."

McKinsey declined to comment when approached by The Bookseller.

Empire of Pain won the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction in November, but lost out on the business book of the year award to Nicole Perlroth, whose winning book This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends (Bloomsbury) is about the cyber weapons arms race.