Taneja wins Gordon Burn Prize for ‘staggering’ Aftermath

Preti Taneja has won the Gordon Burn Prize for her “staggering” book Aftermath (And Other Stories).

Now in its 10th year, the prize celebrates a writer whose work of narrative non-fiction blurs genres and form to understand terror, trauma and grief. The winner was announced at Durham Book Festival on 13th October, selected by a panel of judges, including sportswriter and columnist Jonathan Liew, chair Denise Mina, broadcaster Stuart Maconie, artist and poet Heather Phillipson and writer Chitra Ramaswamy.

Taneja will receive £5,000 as prize money, and the opportunity to take up a writing retreat at Gordon Burn’s cottage in the Scottish Borders. 

Described as “incandescent and unnerving” by Philipson, Aftermath strives to make sense of the London Bridge terror attack in 2019. Usman Khan was a convicted terrorist who spent eight years in prison and went on to kill two people, Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt, at an event marking the anniversary of a prison programme he had participated in. Taneja had taught Kahn in prison and Jack Merritt was her colleague.

Taneja is a professor of world literature and creative writing at Newcastle University. Her first novel, We That Are Young (Galley Beggar), a translation of King Lear set in contemporary India, won the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2018.

“Aftermath is an extraordinary story of fractured narratives and lives that takes us into a world barely glimpsed in headlines and outrage,” Mina said.

Liew added: “Congratulations to Preti Taneja on a staggering piece of work. This was a cruelly tough award to judge, not simply because of the high overall standard but the astonishing breadth of submissions. But Aftermath stood out right from the start of the process: a book that knocks the breath out of you, and not always in a good way. It’s harrowing in parts, heartbreaking in others, humane throughout. 

Ramaswamy said: “Aftermath is a beautifully crafted and carefully judged examination of an atrocity and the structures and systems that surround it. I’m blown away by Preti Taneja’s writing: both the moral integrity of her approach and her fractured, minimalist prose. She has written a radical, profound, profoundly fractured and completely unique work of narrative non-fiction that has stayed with me. I haven’t read anything quite like it, and I can’t think of a more deserving winner of the Gordon Burn Prize.”

The prize is run in partnership by the Gordon Burn Trust, New Writing North, Faber & Faber and Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event.

Councillor Elizabeth Scott, cabinet member for economy and partnerships at Durham County Council, said: “I’d like to say a big congratulations to Preti as the winner of this year’s Gordon Burn Prize, with her poignant and thought-provoking storytelling of a heartbreaking event standing out with judges.”