The Shortlist
This year’s judges shortlisted the following:
Nick Cohen – What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way
256 pages,
Harper Perennial
Nick Cohen argues that the liberal-Left of the 20th century has lost its way. So much so that, Cohen suggests, it now shares some of its political views with the 21st century far Right.
Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer and New Statesman. He does occasional pieces for many other publications, including the London Evening Standard and New Humanist. Cruel Britannia, a collection of his journalism, was published by Verso in 1999, and Pretty Straight Guys, a history of Britain under Tony Blair, was published by Faber in 2003.
Jay Griffiths – Wild: An Elemental Journey
384 pages,
Hamish Hamilton
Jay Griffiths describes her journeys to wildernesses of earth, ice, water and fire in order to explore the words and meanings which shape our ideas and our experience of our own wildness.
Jay Griffiths' writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the Observer, The Ecologist and Resurgence magazine.
William Hague – William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner
592 pages,
Harper Press
William Hague's account of William Wilberforce's turbulent life and career, from the politician's birth in Yorkshire in 1759 through his 20-year-campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, to its final enactment as he lay dying in 1833.
William Hague is Conservative MP for Richmond (Yorks) and Shadow Foreign Secretary. His previous book, William Pitt the Younger, was published in 2004.
Ed Husain – The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left
304 pages,
Penguin
Ed Husain's autobiographical exploration of why young British Muslims are turning to extremism. Husain describes his own experiences inside extremist groups, the reasons he joined them and why he left.
Ed Husain was born, raised, and educated in London. He has lived and travelled extensively in the Middle East and worked for the British Council in Damascus and Jeddah. He is conducting doctoral research on Arab experiences of secularism, and is deputy director of the Muslim think-tank, The Quilliam Foundation.
Marina Lewycka – Two Caravans
320 pages,
Fig Tree
Marina Lewycka's novel tells the story of Ukrainian, Polish, Chinese and Malawian strawberry pickers, living in two caravans in the English countryside.
Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. Her first novel is the bestselling A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005).
Raja Shehadeh – Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
240 pages,
Profile
Raja Shehadeh navigates recent Palestinian history by walking from Ayn Kenya to the Shukba Caves, the Ramallah hills and the Dead Sea.
Raja Shehadeh is the author of the When the Bulbul Stopped Singing and Strangers in the House. He is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is a founder of the human rights organisation, Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East.
Clive Stafford Smith – Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons
320 pages,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Clive Stafford Smith's first hand account of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners.
Stafford Smith is a human-rights lawyer who has spent the last twenty years in the United States representing prisoners on Death Row. His clients include many detainees in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He established the London-based human rights charity Reprieve in 1999.