This Is London longlisted for The 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Ben Judah's This Is London has been longlisted for The 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, which celebrates the best in non-fiction writing.
Ben Judah's This Is London, an investigation into the capital's hidden immigrant population, has been longlisted for The 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, which celebrates the best in non-fiction writing. The titles chosen by the judges span the breadth of non-fiction writing, from literary biography and history to journalism and popular science.
Stephanie Flanders, Chair of the Judges, comments:
“Shortly after committing to judge this award I found I had an overwhelming – and deeply unhelpful – urge to read fiction. But each of these ten very different books takes you on a journey that is as engrossing and imaginative as any novel. They aim high, and deliver. I am not looking forward to having to choose between them.”
The longlist has been chosen by a panel chaired by former BBC Economics Editor, Stephanie Flanders, together with Philip Ball, science writer and author; Jonathan Derbyshire, executive comment editor of the Financial Times; Dr Sophie Ratcliffe, scholar, writer and literary critic and Rohan Silva, co-founder of the social enterprise, Second Home.
Also on the longlist:
Second-hand Time, Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
The Vanishing Man, Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)
Being a Beast, Charles Foster (Profile Books)
Stalin and the Scientists, Simon Ings (Faber & Faber)
Negroland: A Memoir, Margo Jefferson (Granta Books)
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between, Hisham Matar (Viking)
The Gene, Siddhartha Mukherjee (Bodley Head)
East West Street, Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury)
The shortlist will be announced on Monday 17 October. The winner of the 2016 prize will be announced on Tuesday 15 November.