November 19, 2024, 5:15pm
Out of an impressive shortlist, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 has won 2024’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Flanagan’s wide-ranging memoir and history weaves together H.G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, pre-war nuclear physics, his father’s imprisonment near Hiroshima when the American atom bomb falls, and Flanagan’s own life-or-death experience on a raging river, and more. You can read an excerpt of the book, in which Flanagan visits the spot where his father was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp, here.
Isabel Hilton, who chaired this year’s panel of judges, says of the winner:
Question 7 is an astonishingly accomplished meditation on memory, history, trauma, love and death—and an intricately woven exploration of the chains of consequence that frame a life.
In a year rich in remarkable books, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 spoke to the judges for its outstanding literary qualities and its profound humanity. This compelling memoir ranges from intimate human relations to an unflinching examination of the horrors of the 20th century, reflecting on unanswerable questions that we must keep asking.
Flanagan, however, has rejected the £50,000 prize. The author said he will not accept prize money until fund manager reduces its fossil fuel investments. He said he would welcome an opportunity to speak with Baillie Gifford’s board, to thank them and to “describe how fossil fuels are destroying our country,” reported The Guardian.