Image: Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also: Translation: ALTA Announces Its 2024 Shortlists in Prose and Poetry
‘Exceptional Scholarship and Compelling Narrative’
This evening (October 10), the 2024 shortlist for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction has been named at the Cheltenham Literature Festival by juror Peter Hoskin.
Of special interest to some of our international Publishing Perspectives readers may be the shortlisting of Belgian archeologist David Van Reybrouck’s Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, in the Penguin Random House / Bodley Head English translation by David Colmer and David McKay.
And prize director Toby Mundy‘s team points out to members of the news media that there are two potentially significant second-competition wins here, with the 2014 Booker Prize for Fiction winner Richard Flanagan (The Narrow Road to the Deep North from Penguin Random House’s Chatto & Windus) and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer from Grove Press).
Poster art for the 2024 serial adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel for the MAX serial that began streaming in April. Image: A24 Films
A winner, who takes home a purse of £50,000 (US$65,280), is to be named on November 19, and the jury, as you’ll recall, comprises:
- Isabel Hilton (chair), journalist, broadcaster, and founder of China Dialogue
- Heather Brooke, author and investigative journalist
- Alison Flood, comment and culture editor for New Scientist
- Peter Hoskin, culture editor of Prospect
- Tomiwa Owolade, writer and critic
- Chitra Ramaswamy, author, restaurant critic and journalist
In addition to the program’s generous winner’s purse, each of the shortlisted authors is a recipient of £1,000 (US$1,305).
Isabel Hilton
Speaking for the panel, Hilton says, “The six shortlisted books showcase a breathtaking range of subjects and styles, expand our understanding and challenge our perspectives.
“Each one demonstrates exceptional scholarship and compelling narrative and offers profound insight into some of the most pressing issues of our time. It is a shortlist that we celebrate as a testament to the power of nonfiction to enlighten, engage and inspire us.
“Choosing a winner will be a daunting task but one that we embrace with enthusiasm.”
Toby Mundy
And of course, in a new reflection of the publishing industry’s fondness for awards, the Baillie Gifford is the book award regime the executive director of which—Toby Mundy, CEO of Aevitas Creative Management Limited—announced to us last November that it will follow the Booker Foundation’s lead and begin reporting indications of what impact their highest honors can confer in the marketplace.
This means that, very much as the Booker does in fiction and translated fiction, Mundy’s Baillie Gifford team—at a time interval of its own choosing—will inform various news media of the sales impact a title has encountered following its announcement as the winner. As with the British Academy Book Prize, also expected to start reporting sales impact for winners, this is expected to be the first prize cycle in which the Baillie Gifford places its market-impact analysis on the table in terms of how many copies, print runs, and/or other elements of retail clout might be seen in the performance of a winner after some weeks or months.
What’s more, we’ve been pleased to hear from Rachael Daum, communications and awards manager with the United States’ National Translation Awards, that she’s hoping to begin providing similar input from these “ALTA”-winning titles as to what kind of performance they show in the marketplace after a win from the American Literary Translators Association’s highly regarded honor. It’s likely that the decision by Mundy and has helped prompt Daum to consider quantifying the market-influence potential of a prominent awards outlet.
In the aggregate—and hoping that more awards programs follow these leads—these efforts will open new ways to evaluate and celebrate how much enthusiasm and commerce the “golden sticker” on a book cover can actually be expected to generate.
The Baillie Gifford Prize 2024 Shortlist
Known from 1999 to 2015 as the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, the Baillie Gifford is open to books in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography, and the arts. Not unlike the Cundill History Prize; the British Academy Book Prize (also expected to start reporting sales impact for winners); the issue-driven Aspen Words Literary Prize in the States, and several other programs in nonfiction, an emphasis here is on readable interpretations of current affairs, often with historical perspective.
For our internationalist readership, a note that the publishers listed here are the UK publishers of the Baillie Gifford’s longlisted titles. In cases of books originally published in other markets before being released in the United Kingdom, you may have encountered a title as another publisher’s release and in an earlier year.
| Author, Translator (Nationality) | Title | Publisher and/or Imprint |
| Rachel Clarke (British) | The Story of a Heart | Hachette UK / Little, Brown / Abacus |
| Richard Flanagan (Australian) | Question 7 | Penguin Random House / Vintage / Chatto & Windus |
| Annie Jacobsen (American) | Nuclear War: A Scenario | Penguin Random House / Transworld / Torva |
| Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnamese-American) |
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial | Hachette UK / Little, Brown / Corsair |
| Sue Prideaux (British) | Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin | Faber & Faber |
| David Van Reybrouck (Belgian) Translated by David Colmer and David McKay |
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World | Penguin Random House / Vintage / The Bodley Head |
The 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize Winner
Knopf’s USA cover design
Having watched this week as Hurricane Milton followed Hurricane Helene in under two weeks, each with extraordinary force and causing loss of life and property. The power-generation of the Gulf of Mexico’s high water temperatures comes to mind in recalling the Baillie Gifford’s selection last year of the American-Canadian author John Vaillant for his Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.
It was released on May 23, 2023, in the United Kingdom by Sceptre, a division of Hachette UK’s Hodder & Stoughton. In the United States and Canada, the book is published by Penguin Random House’s Knopf, and was released on June 6, 2023.
In awaiting the announcement of a new winner from the Baillie Gifford, it’s good to know that this competition’s choice will mean not only an eye for responsible, current-events literature but also for its willingness to discover and share just what its careful work in honoring nonfiction can do to connect more books with the right consumers.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the international publishing business’ myriad book and industry awards is here, more on the United Kingdom’s market is here, more on the Baillie Gifford Prize is here, and more on nonfiction is here.