In her Observer review, Imogen Carter said of Nothing to Envy: “Demick’s important book, by illuminating previously hidden aspects of North Korean life, helps restore humanity to some of the world’s most oppressed people.” skip past newsletter promotionĮmpire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, which won in 2021, is a history of the Sackler dynasty and tells the story of America’s opioid crisis. Meanwhile Davis’s Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, which won the prize in 2012, was described by the judges as an “epic tale of imperialist decline and the power of the death drive” that was “deeply researched and written with narrative compulsion”.ĭemick’s Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea, which won in 2010, was chosen by the judges because of its “seamless synthesis of personal and political histories”, the judges said. The judges called One Two Three Four “irreverent and yet profound, biographical and yet fantastical”, praising it as a “wholly original winner of the prize”. “They were absolutely relevant and urgent when they were published and absolutely relevant and urgent today.”Ĭowley is joined on the judging panel by academic, critic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari, journalist, author and academic Sarah Churchwell and biographer and critic Frances Wilson.īrown makes the shortlist for his 2020 winner One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, his story of the British pop group and the people within their orbit, from Yoko Ono to their psychedelic dentist, John Riley.

“These books are very, very exciting,” he said. Chair of judges Jason Cowley, who is editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, said the shortlist showed “range and quality”.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe