The longlist for this year’s Orwell Book Prize, Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing, has been announced today, Wednesday 28th March 2012.
Book Prize
A record 264 books were whittled down to 18 by this year’s judges, Miranda Carter (writer and winner of the Orwell Prize 2002 for Anthony Blunt: His Lives), Sameer Rahim (assistant books editor, Daily Telegraph) and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC (previously shortlisted for Just Law).
The longlisted books are:
Rodric Braithwaite Afgansty (Profile Books)
Sherard Cowper-Cowles Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign (HarperPress)
Siddhartha Deb The Beautiful and the Damned: A portrait of the New India (Penguin)
Misha Glenny Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You (Vintage)
Robin Harris The Conservatives: A History(Transworld Publishers)
Toby Harnden Dead Men Risen (Quercus)
Christopher Hitchens Arguably (Atlantic books)
Gavin Knight Hood Rat (Picador)
Anatol Lieven Pakistan: A hard country(Penguin)
Richard Lloyd Parry People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman (Jonathan Cape)
Julia Lovell The Opium War (Pan Macmillan)
Caroline Moorehead A Train in Winter: A Story of Resistance, Friendship and Survival (Vintage)Douglas Murray Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and The Saville Inquiry (Biteback publishing)
Sonia Purnell Just Boris: The Irresistible Rise of a Political Celebrity
Jeffrey Sachs The Price of Civilization(Vintage)
Lucy Siegle To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World (HarperPress)
Christopher Turner Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex (HarperPress)
Conor Woodman Unfair Trade (Hutchinson)
Christopher Hitchens is longlisted for a second consecutive year after making it onto the 2011 shortlist with ‘Hitch-22’. Also longlisted for a second time is Anatol Lieven, who first appeared on the longlist in 1994.