From Casey Cep’s investigation into Harper Lee’s abandoned true-crime book to Hallie Rubenhold’s look at the women murdered by Jack the Ripper, the shortlist for the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction is dominated by female writers telling the untold stories of women.
Five of the six writers in the running for the £50,000 award, one of the UK’s most prestigious for nonfiction, are female. Historian Rubenhold was picked for The Five, which lays out the “untold lives” of the victims of Jack the Ripper, while New Yorker writer Cep is listed for Furious Hours, in which she unpicks Lee’s aborted attempt to write about the case of the murderous preacher Willie Maxwell in the late 1970s.
In a genre that has been dominated by male writers, three more women made the cut this year: Observer art critic Laura Cumming for On Chapel Sands, about her mother’s childhood kidnapping from a Lincolnshire beach; journalist Azadeh Moaveni for Guest House for Young Widows, a collection of accounts from women who joined Islamic State; and historian Julia Lovell for Maoism, a re-evaluation of the political legacy of Mao.
William Feaver’s biography, The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth, completes the shortlist, which was picked from a longlist of 12, featuring five men and seven women.
Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell, chair of the judging panel, said: “It was a gloriously testing, combative process, full of passionate arguments and the changing of minds, concessions and hold-outs. I think we’ve ended up with a shortlist full of brilliance and verve, huge scope and evocative detail. I urge everyone to get reading these books. They will not be disappointed. The winner, when it emerges, will have beaten some magnificent competition.”
Last year, the prize was won by Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy for his account of the 1986 nuclear disaster, Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy. This year’s winner will be announced on 19 November.
Baillie Gifford prize 2019 shortlist
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (William Heinemann)
On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)
The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth by William Feaver (Bloomsbury)
Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (Vintage)
Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni (Scribe)
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)
