The Baillie Gifford Prize 2019 Longlist Podcast

In this episode, our podcast host, Razia Iqbal, is joined by judges Stig Abell and Frances Wilson to talk about the twelve books that have made it onto the longlist.

The twelve titles span history, biography, reportage and memoir, with several addressing major themes including race, terror, ideology and housing crises.

The twelve titles on this year’s longlist are:

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  I Will Never See the World Again, Ahmet Altan, translated by Yasemin Çongar (Granta Books)

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Casey Cep (William Heinemann)

On Chapel Sands, Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed, Catrina Davis (Riverrun)

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth, William Feaver (Bloomsbury Publishing)

The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment, Amelia Gentleman (Guardian Faber)

Maoism: A Global History, Julia Lovell (Vintage)

The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell's 1984, Dorian Lynskey (Picador)

Guest House for Young Widows, Azadeh Moaveni (Scribe UK)

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)

The Outlaw Ocean, Ian Urbina (Vintage)

 

In the podcast, Stig, this year’s chair of judges discusses how much he has enjoyed the process so far. Stig and Frances converse over current publishing trends, the genuine pleasure they both get from reading and celebrating the best of nonfiction writing.

From how Ahmet Altan wrote I Will Never See the World Again from the extraordinary circumstances of a Turkish prison cell, to the political truths revealed by Amelia Gentleman in The Windrush Betrayal. Razia and Stig delve into a discussion about the twelve books and how they came to be selected.

The next podcast episode will focus on the 6 books that make it onto the shortlist, announced on the 22 of October. The 21^st winner of the prize will be announced on 19 November at a dinner generously hosted by The Blavatnik Family Foundation, who also supports the podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher and Entale.