Nesrine Malik is a columnist and features writer for The Guardian. Her work focuses on British politics and global movements for social inclusion. She is the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind our Age of Discontent.
Tom McTague grew up in County Durham. His first job in journalism was at the Independent on Sunday, where he later returned as political editor. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and co-authored the 2017 election book, Betting the House. He lives in London with his wife and two children.
Sarah O’Connor is a columnist, reporter and associate editor at the Financial Times. She writes a weekly column focused on the world of work, as well as longer features and investigations.
Megha Rajagopalan is a senior correspondent for BuzzFeed News in London. Previously she opened BuzzFeed’s China bureau and, before that, worked as a political correspondent for Reuters in Beijing. Alison Killing is an architect and open source investigator. She specialises in geospatial analysis. Over the past few years her work has focused on migration to Europe and Xinjiang’s camps.
Jonathan Calvert is the editor of The Sunday Times’ renowned Insight investigative team. His accolades include British Journalist of the Year and the Paul Foot Award as well as Scoop of the Year on four occasions. George Arbuthnott joined The Sunday Times on the Marie Colvin Scholarship and is now deputy editor of the Insight team. He has won six British Journalism and UK Press Awards, including Investigation of the Year and Scoop of the Year, and has been shortlisted for an Amnesty International Award, the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize.
Jack Shenker is a London-based journalist who writes about how power works and how it gets subverted – particularly by those on the margins – as well as anything else that springs to mind. His latest book is ‘Now We Have Your Attention’, published by The Bodley Head and Vintage. www.jackshenker.net
Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and a regular contributor to newspapers including the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review. Her most recent book is Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream (2018).
Bellingcat is making open-source and data-driven investigations, that in recent years have uncovered multiple crimes and clandestine operations throughout the world. Our Russian probes are led by Christo Grozev, who alongside Aric Toler, Pieter van Huis, Roman Dobrokhotov and Yordan Tsalov, revealed Kremlin’s involvement in the Navalny poisoning, Russia’s Clandestine Chemical Weapons Programme and many assassinations conducted by the country’s security services.
Matthew d’Ancona is an Editor and Partner at Tortoise Media, and a columnist for the Evening Standard. He was Deputy Editor of The Sunday Telegraph before becoming editor of The Spectator in 2006. His latest book is Identity, Ignorance, Innovation (Hodder). He was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1989.
Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he is an editorial board member of the Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media. His book Another Day in the Death of America was shortlisted for The Orwell Prize for Books in 2018.
“Gary Younge examined the major themes of the past 12 months, covid-19 and racism, with the eloquence of an expert journalist and the depth of an academic. His analysis of George Floyd’s murder, the differential impact of the pandemic on Black and Asian communities, and the role of racism and inequalities brings sharp and original insights that, although delivered at the height of the crisis, remain undeniable today.” – Kamran Abbasi, Executive Editor of the BMJ
Set in what was German East Africa in the early years of the 20th century, Afterlives is an exquisite and haunting exploration of lives disrupted by colonial wars, and the chaos that followed the European scramble for Africa. At once subtle and limpid, the narrative interweaves the lives of characters at the mercy of the destructive forces unleashed by colonial struggles for supremacy but determined to grasp what happiness their troubled times will allow them.”
An apeirogon is a mathematical term for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides and is used by Colum McCann as a metaphor for the complexity of relationships between Israelis and Palestinians. Despite its abstract-sounding title, McCann’s astonishing novel is utterly and brilliantly grounded in the political realities of everyday life in the Occupied Territories, and the friendship of two men, who have both lost daughters in the conflict, and who forge a moving friendship across the many barriers that would divide them.”
Sarah Moss’ microcosm of modern Britain captures the simmering sense of political unease across a cross-section of society. As her characters take turns to share Moss’ spotlight, each of their anxieties about the country’s future are given context and compassion: it is a sensitive and three-dimensional portrait of a nation on the edge, brimming with tension.”
A wry and thoroughly wise state-of-the-nation novel which perfectly captures the anxieties of life in modern America: Weather is the work of an author wholly in control of her craft. Offill’s epigrammatic prose is so well observed and beautifully written it begs to be reread, and lingers with the reader well beyond the novel’s final page.”
A story of love, family, and the colonial past in a Caribbean setting combine in Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch. This magic realist novel is inspired in its conception, deftly written and full of wisdom.”
Famous for her counterfactual novels about American politics, in Rodham Curtis Sittenfeld brilliantly riffs on what might have happened had Hillary never accepted Bill – at the third time of asking. A beguiling mixture of fact and fiction, this book immerses us in the intricacies and deal-with-the-devil calculations facing anyone hoping to succeed in American politics – particularly a woman! – and captures the inner life of a public figure determined to make a difference, yet also in search of personal happiness.”
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey’s Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for The Orwell Prize for Books in 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.
Smith, accepting her prize in a speech next to the mural of Orwell at Southwold Pier in Suffolk, sent this message:
The judges said:
The conclusion to Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet seals her reputation as the great chronicler of our age. Capturing a snapshot of life in Britain right up until the present day, Smith takes the emotional temperature of a nation grappling with a global pandemic, the brink of Brexit, heart-breaking conditions for refugees, and so much more. It will serve as a time-capsule which will prove to be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the mood of Britain during this turbulent time.”
Rumaan Alam’s taut and terrifying disaster novel is a masterclass in dystopian scene-setting and pacing. Skewering consumerism, privilege, and our reliance on technology, Alam highlights the uselessness of societal divisions in the face of shared global catastrophe. A highly original, eerie, and prescient page-turner which wrestles complex social issues with confidence and verve.”