Montreal's Naomi Klein, American author V. V. Ganeshananthan win $53K U.K. Women's Prize literary awards
The U.K. prizes celebrate the best nonfiction and fiction by women
Canadian writer Naomi Klein and American author V. V. Ganeshananthan have won the 2024 Women's Prizes.
The U.K.-based awards, both worth £30,000 (approx. $52,619.70 Cdn), recognize the best fiction and nonfiction written in English by a woman.
Klein won the inaugural nonfiction award for her book Doppelganger, while Ganeshananthan received the fiction award for her novel Brotherless Night.
In Doppelganger, Klein blends political reportage and cultural analysis to explore the concept of the Mirror World, where elements of far-right movements attempt to appeal to the working class. The book examines issues such as the rise of anti-vaxxers, the implications of artificial intelligence in content curation and how society constructs identities to engage and interact on social media.
By referencing thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and bell hooks, Klein also connects to greater social themes to share how one can break free from the Mirror World.
"This brilliant and layered analysis demonstrates humour, insight and expertise," said historian and broadcaster Suzannah Lipscomb, the jury chair, in a press statement.
"Klein's writing is both deeply personal and impressively expansive. Doppelganger is a courageous, humane and optimistic call-to-arms that moves us beyond black and white, beyond Right and Left, inviting us instead to embrace the spaces in between.
The other jury members were broadcaster Venetia La Manna, academic and author Nicola Rollock, biographer Anne Sebba and novelist Kamila Shamsie. Shamsie won the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction for her novel Home Fire.
Klein is the Montreal-born author of international bestsellers including This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, No Is Not Enough, and On Fire, which have been published in more than 35 languages.
She is an associate professor in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia and the founding co-director of UBC's Centre of Climate Justice.
The other shortlisted titles for the nonfiction prize were All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, A Flat Place by Noreen Masud, Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia, Thunderclap by Laura Cumming and How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair.
Brotherless Night, which also won the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, follows the story of 16-year-old Sashi in 1981 Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Sashi, an aspiring doctor, wants to do something to help her brothers and friends who are swept up in the violence of the civil war.
She decides to work as a medic for the Tamil Tigers, a militant group who are fighting for self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But when the Tigers kill a beloved teacher and Indian peacekeepers show up and only incite more the violence, Sashi begins to question what she stands for and accepts a dangerous opportunity to document human rights violations.
"Brotherless Night is a brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel that bears witness to the intimate and epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war," said jury chair Monica Ali in a press statement.
"In rich, evocative prose, Ganeshananthan creates a vivid sense of time and place and an indelible cast of characters. Her commitment to complexity and clear-eyed moral scrutiny combines with spellbinding storytelling to render Brotherless Night a masterpiece of historical fiction."
The remaining judges for the 2024 fiction prize were author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, author and visual artist Laura Dockrill, actor Indira Varma and author Anna Whitehouse.
Ganeshananthan is an American writer and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. She served as the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, on the board of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and is a current board member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
She teaches at the University of Minnesota and co-host a podcast called Fiction/Non/Fiction. Her first novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Women's Prize.
The other finalists were Aube Rey Lescure's for River East, River West, Isabella Hammad's Enter Ghost, Claire Kilroy for Soldier, Sailor, Anne Enright for The Wren, The Wren and Kate Grenville for Restless Dolly Maunder.
Last year's winner was Barbara Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead.
The Women's Prize was established by Women's Prize Trust, a registered charity championing women writers on a global stage.
The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction was announced last year as a companion to the influential Women's Prize for Fiction, which has been given out annually since 1996.
Three Canadians have won the fiction prize: B.C. author Ruth Ozeki won in 2022 for The Book of Form and Emptiness; Winnipeg's Carol Shields won in 1998 for her novel Larry's Party and Toronto's Anne Michaels won in 1997 for her novel Fugitive Pieces.
