Macfarlane and Al-Khalili on Warwick shortlist

30.08.13 | Joshua Farrington - The Bookseller

Two titles from Penguin have been shortlisted for this year's Warwick Prize: science history Pathfinders by Jim Al-Khalili and The Old Ways by nature writer Robert Macfarlane.
The prize, open to fiction, non-fiction and poetry written in English by a writer of any nationality, is run every two years by the University of Warwick.

Also in the running for this year's award are Sufficient Grace by Amy Elspeth (Scribe), a novel about a religious community in rural Wisconsin; Delusions of Gender, a study by cognitive neuroscientist Cordelia Fine (Icon Books); short story collection Suddenly, a Knock on the Door by Israeli writer Etgar Keret (Chatto); and Memorial by Alice Oswald (Faber), a collection of poems inspired by Homer's Iliad.

The chair of judges is Professor Ian Sansom of Warwick's Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, who is joined by professor Marina Warner and professor Ed Byrne of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Sansom said: "We believe the shortlist exemplifies the inclusive approach to the appreciation of literature that the Warwick Prize for Writing was established to promote."
Naomi Klein won the inaugural prize in 2009 for The Shock Doctrine (Penguin), while Peter Forbes won in 2011 for Dazzled and Deceived (Yale University Press).

The winner will be announced at a ceremony held at the Wallace Collection in London on 24th September.