Thursday, July 1, 2010

BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction won by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, a Los Angeles Times journalist, has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. The account of life in North Korea drawn from interviews with defectors was described by Evan Davis, presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today show and chairman of the judges, as "gripping and moving".

Nothing to Envy beat five other works to the prize.

The short list was:

•Alex’s Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos (Bloomsbury)
•Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)
•Blood Knots by Luke Jennings (Atlantic Books)
•Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Penguin, Allen Lane)
•A Gambling Man by Jenny Uglow (Faber and Faber)
•Catching Fire: How Cooking made us Human by Richard Wrangham (Profile Books)

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