American author Ben Lerner has won this year’s Orwell Prize for political fiction for Transcription, a novel that explores technology and memory.
In nonfiction, the award went to Karen Bartlett for The Escape from Kabul, based on Afghan women lawyers who are endangered after the fall of Kabul in 2021.
Award, which aims to highlight the best books Orwell’s own ambition To “make political writing an art”, come up with £5,000.
The first section of Lerner’s novel sees the narrator traveling to Providence, Rhode Island, to conduct a final interview with an eccentric German intellectual, Thomas. However, in his hotel room, the narrator drops his phone in the sink, meaning he is left with no functioning recording device. He continues the interview without telling Thomas that the conversation is not being recorded.
“A forensic study of our insatiable appetite for new technology, (The Transcription) explores the incredible stories we tell ourselves about hunger, love and connection,” said judge Fiammetta Rocco, who has led the International Booker Prize for 20 years. “It’s about dying with dignity and growing up in a new world. It’s funny, brainy and timely. Lerner deserves to be a household name.”
Along with the transcriptions, the titles shortlisted for this year’s fiction prize were A Private Man by Stephanie Si-Kwia, Every One Still Here by Liadan Ni Chuin, Fleshlight by Susan Choi, John of John by Douglas Stuart, The Comfort of Distant Stars by Io Echeruo, This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniel Muinuddin, and Uprising by Tahmima Anam.
Rocco was joined on the fiction judging panel by academics Scarlett Barron and Olivet Oteley, as well as Telegraph literary editor Cal Rewley-Calder.
Rohan Silva, a former policy adviser and founder of the Libreria bookshop in London’s Spitalfields, said Bartlett’s nonfiction prize-winner, The Escape from Kabul, is “deep and crisp, and sheds light on a story that deserves attention”. “The plight of Afghanistan’s extremely brave female judges in the face of Islamic fundamentalism is a gripping story – and Karen Bartlett tells it with deep reserves of empathy and compassion. The book really is Orwellian in the most positive sense.”
Along with Bartlett’s book, the shortlisted non-fiction titles were For the Sun After Long Nights, Israel: What Went Wrong, by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizi? by Omar Bartov, Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple, Stalin’s Apostles by Antonia Senior, The Elements of Power by Nicholas Niarchos, The Wall Dancers by Yi-Ling Liu, and Three Years on Fire by Andrey Kurkov.
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Silva was joined on the nonfiction panel by editor Sam Bowman, academic Lawrence Friedman, author Jessie Lau and Times technology business editor Katie Prescott.
Previous winners of the fiction prize include Hisham Matar, Ali Smith, Donal Ryan, and Claire Keegan, while past nonfiction winners include Patrick Radden Keefe, Victoria Amelina, and Peter Epps.
