British Academy Book Prize 2024 shortlist announced

The British Academy website

Now in its 12th year, the international book prize, rewards and celebrates ground-breaking works of non-fiction that have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of world cultures and their interactions, and are grounded in rigorous and high-quality research.

This year’s British Academy Book Prize judges have chosen a shortlist of six exceptional books from a record-breaking number of submissions. They are:

  • Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway (WH Allen / Ebury Publishing / Penguin Random House)

  • Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray / HarperCollins India)

  • The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & Its Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell (Viking / Penguin Random House)

  • The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 by Marcy Norton (Harvard University Press)

  • Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues by Ross Perlin (Grove Press UK)

  • Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare by Annabel Sowemimo (Profile Books / Wellcome Collection)

Congratulations, Dr. Norton!