The Orwell Political Fiction Book Prize
My ongoing quest to find new (to me) and interesting awards to help guide my reading into books I wouldn't normally be aware of has today led me to the Orwell Foundation's Political Fiction Book Prize1. This year's selection of finalists is a mix of books I've read or was aware of through other awards and books that are entirely new to me, and interestingly the winner - Hisham Matar's My Friends - is a book that was on the Booker longlist but didn't advance to the shortlist. I still haven't read it but now I'm curious to bump it up my list, because I'd like to see what the Orwell Foundation saw in it that the Booker judges didn't.
Last week I put together a list of all the awards shortlists I've been thinking about trying to read next year and in total it came to about 80 books, which is much too high a goal to aim for (even if I've comfortably read much more than that this year). So looking at a shortlist that has some overlap with others appeals to me as a way to lessen the commitments I make to myself. (That said, last year's Orwell Prize doesn't share any books with the Booker, but last year's Booker lists were also fairly apolitical). I'm certainly not going to try to read any of the Orwell finalists this year, as I still have a lot of things I'd like to get to before the end of the year, but I'm going to bump My Friends up the list and perhaps try to read last year's winner so that when it comes to January and I'm planning my provisional reading list for the coming year I'll have an idea of whether the Prize's selections align with my tastes.
Next year I intend to try and read more nonfiction, so the Political Writing Book Prize is also very interesting to me, though that's not something where I'd make an attempt to read all of the finalists.↩