The Subtle Art of Non-Fiction

As part of our wider engagement with the next generation of non-fiction enthusiasts, Ben, a student from the University of Birmingham, has written us a piece about his views on the 2024 shortlist and winner, as well as the intriguing connections between fiction and non-fiction as literary genres.

“Writing non-fiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing”. Joan Didion’s immortal and lyrical words embody the often-overlooked fine artistry involved in composing non-fiction. However, I have only truly learned to appreciate such skill since reintroducing myself to the intriguing practice of reading non-fiction last year, when I was fortunate enough to begin working with and covering the 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize through the University of Birmingham.

Initially intended as a light-hearted, but insightful break from the literary analysis required by my course, excavating cryptic meanings embedded within fictional texts, I immediately found myself driven to explore the rich breadth of stories and perspectives that the non-fiction genre has to offer, with Jennifer Homans’ biography Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20^th Century (2022) being of special interest after hearing the shortlist announcement for the prize at the 2023 Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Since then, my engagement with the genre has only continued to grow, and with it my burgeoning passion for not only encountering fresh and unfamiliar viewpoints on topics neglected by mainstream coverage, epitomised this year in David Van Reybrouck’s bestseller account of Indonesian history Revolusi (2020), but also the distinctive and compelling writing styles of expert non-fiction authors: a striking attribute evident in the work of all the candidates for this year’s prize.

As a student of English Literature, the build-up and anticipation for this year’s edition of the prize was particularly exciting due to the vast array of talented fictional writers appearing on the longlist, such as Salman Rushdie and former Booker winner Richard Flanagan, offering the prospect to see how these writers transition outside of their familiar fictional forms, and whether this adjustment translates into a marked dichotomy from their fictional mode, or yields a hybrid hue to add to their stylistic palette.

The eventual winner of this year’s edition of the prize, Richard Flanagan’s emotionally profound memoir Question 7 (2023), dubbed as an “unclassifiable” work by critics, confronts not only the unique and often sophisticated relationship between writing fiction and non-fiction, but also reading it: a question pertinent to the bewildering nature of our current time. In a world where the pursuit for veracity often seems futile, where news information is habitually skewed by the global dissemination of contradictory and biased opinions on social media, Flanagan’s contemplative work not only maps such innate difficulties of acquiring a rational sense of truth in his own journey, but also reminds us how nothing in life is black and white, and that truth is a fundamentally ambiguous conception.

Equivocal tensions, psychological, ethical, and philosophical, tug at the heart of this historical memoir, but Flanagan maintains a subtle tone of honesty throughout that creates a common mutuality and empathetic understanding with the reader, meeting them in the struggle to comprehend their past and participating in that experience with them. This special characteristic inhabits many of the longlisted memoirs for this year’s prize and signifies the value of non-fiction not only in informing readers of fascinating, unfamiliar content, but in simultaneously providing a forum for communication between reader and writer in processing the shared challenges and questions that life poses.

Equally, the shortlisted works for this year’s prize also exhibit certain unique qualities of perspective that fiction can tend to lack. Whilst the mediums of fiction literature are appealing channels to express an author’s introspective meditations, less recognition is afforded non-fiction for how it can conversely demonstrate a writer’s sharp awareness to their surroundings, piercing through the deceptive facades and masks that govern the media and sociopolitical landscape to unearth an unembellished, clean, hidden truths of the matter. I found that such sensitivity to the delicacy of the truth is vividly evoked in my current read from the shortlisted books, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s A Man of Two Faces (2023) which tackles the trickiness of understanding one’s identity amidst conflicting national interests, which is faced not only by Vietnamese Americans but also millions of expatriates globally, with an intimate delicacy of language towards an inner visceral turmoil that mirrors the effect of broader migrant experience.

Overall, I believe that 2024 has been a crucial year for the non-fiction genre in garnering wider attention towards the genre and demonstrating the influential value non-fiction can provide in shaping society. The books shortlisted for this year’s prize have not only raised awareness towards often overlooked sociopolitical issues and the unique stories that these affairs create, but also raise some relevant questions concerning the genre towards us as readers: prompting us to continue asking ourselves the question of who we are reading, what we are reading it from and why it is important to engage and enjoy non-fiction material.