Richard Flanagan and Viet Thanh Nguyen are among those shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction writing in English.
If Flanagan takes home the £50,000 award in November, he would become the first person to win both the Baillie Gifford and the Booker, which he received in 2014.
The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke (Abacus)
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan (Chatto)
Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen (Torva)
A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Corsair)
Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux (Faber)
Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck, translated by David Colmer and David McKay (Bodley Head)
The six shortlisted books, announced on Thursday at Cheltenham literature festival, “showcase a breathtaking range of subjects and styles, expand our understanding and challenge our perspectives,” said judging chair and journalist Isabel Hilton.
Flanagan was shortlisted for Question 7, in which he blends history, auto-fiction and memoir to address questions about love, memory and morality. “It is a brilliant meditation on the past of one man and the history that coalesced in his existence,” wrote Tara June Winch in her Guardian review.
Nguyen, whose debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer prize for fiction, was shortlisted for A Man of Two Faces, described by judges as an “exquisitely wrought memoir”. Nguyen “meditates with great care, insight, and humour on subjects ranging from his childhood to Hollywood, the Vietnam war to the search for belonging”, they added.
The shortlist features two British writers, Rachel Clarke and Sue Prideaux, who have both been recognised by the prize before – Clarke was longlisted in 2020, and Prideaux was shortlisted in 2012.
Clarke was selected for The Story of a Heart, in which she sets the story of two children connected by a heart transplant against the history of heart surgery. “While there is much to be gleaned here about the minutiae of medical inventions and procedures, Clarke never loses sight of the human impact,” wrote Fiona Sturges in her review of the book.
Prideaux was shortlisted for Wild Thing, a biography of the French artist Paul Gauguin. Prideaux “examines the facts and contexts of the painter’s South Sea life in greater detail than before, while refusing to begin to judge any of those choices”, wrote Tim Adams in his Observer review.
Also shortlisted was American journalist Annie Jacobsen for Nuclear War, exploring what would happen, minute by minute, if nuclear missiles were launched at the Pentagon. Completing the shortlist is Revolusi by Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck, translated by David Colmer and David McKay. The book, which focuses on Indonesia’s struggle for independence, was described as a “superb history” by Charlie English in the Guardian.
Salman Rushdie was among the longlisted writers who did not make the shortlist. He was nominated for his memoir Knife, in which he recounts being attacked on stage in August 2022. The other longlisted titles were The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz, What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales, Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer and Judgement at Tokyo by Gary J Bass.
Alongside Hilton on the 2024 judging panel are author and journalist Heather Brooke, New Scientist comment and culture editor Alison Flood, Prospect culture editor Peter Hoskin, writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade, and author and restaurant critic Chitra Ramaswamy.
They selected this year’s shortlist from 349 titles published in the UK between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024. The winning author will be announced on 19 November. While the winner will receive £50,000, the other shortlisted authors will each receive £5,000.
Investment management company Baillie Gifford has sponsored the prize since 2016. Over the past year, it has been criticised for investments in fossil fuels and companies linked to Israel. A campaign run by Fossil Free Books led to authors withdrawing from appearances at literary festivals that were also sponsored by Baillie Gifford.
By June this year, nine partnerships between the company and literary festivals had been cancelled, though the sponsorship of the nonfiction award remained in place. At the time, a spokesperson for the Baillie Gifford prize said that the competition had always found the company “to be collaborative, generous and transparent about their investments”.
Baillie Gifford “are contracted to sponsor the prize until the end of 2025 and we are fully committed to that relationship”, they added. Organisers told the Guardian that two authors asked to withdraw their book from consideration for this year’s prize, with one explicitly stating Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship as the reason.
Previous winners of the prize include Anna Funder, Jonathan Coe, Patrick Radden Keefe and Hallie Rubenhold. Last year, John Vaillant won the prize for Fire Weather, which tells the story of the wildfires that struck Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada in 2016.
• To explore all the books on the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction 2024 shortlist visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
