The 2009 Wingate Literary Prize Shortlist

London, 31 March 2009 - The shortlist for this year’s JQ-Wingate Literary Prize 2009 has been revealed, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday 20th May.
The shortlist is as follows:

Amir Gutfreund – The World a Moment Later (Toby Press)

Zoë Heller – The Believers (Fig Tree)

Ladislaus Löb – Dealing with Satan (Jonathan Cape)

Denis MacShane – Globalising Hatred (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Fred Wander – The Seventh Well (Granta)

Jackie Wullschlager - Chagall: Love and Exile (Allen Lane)

Commenting on the shortlist, Chairman of the Judging Panel Will Skidelsky said:

‘The shortlist - which emerged, I think it's fair to say, with a surprisingly low level of disagreement - spans fiction and non-fiction, the past and the present, and a variety of literary styles. We have a major biography of an artist whose life seems almost to stand for 20th-century Jewish experience; a delightfully eccentric novel about Israel's “shadow history”; an impassioned polemic about the resurgence of anti-Semitism as a global force; an acerbic portrayal of Jewish family life in New York; and two very different books about the Holocaust. Every work on this list could plausibly win the prize, and choosing between them won't be easy.’

This is the only UK prize to recognise writing by Jewish and non-Jewish authors, which stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern while appealing to the general reader.

Former winners include Amos Oz, David Grossman, Zadie Smith, Imre Kertesz, Oliver Sacks, WG Sebald, and Etgar Keret.