Keeper by Andrea Gillies wins the first ever Wellcome Trust Book Prize

A thoughtful and moving book which takes the reader on a journey into dementia has won the first, £25,000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

The prize which is in its inaugural year is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. Andrea Gillies’ book Keeper (Short Books) which is about the author’s decision to take on the full-time care of her mother-in-law, an Alzheimer’s sufferer, beat a shortlist of six books.

The diverse shortlist featured both factual accounts and gripping novels on broad subject matter from a thriller set in a US laboratory to real life accounts of living with illness.
Keeper is a very humane and honest exploration of living with Alzheimer’s giving an illuminating account of the disease itself.

Jo Brand, comedienne and former psychiatric nurse chaired the judging panel and made the announcement at an awards ceremony at the Wellcome Collection, London. She said:

“Andrea Gillies’ account of living with Alzheimer’s is the perfect fusion of narrative with enough memorable science not to choke you. It’s a fantastic book – down to earth and darkly comic in places. The judges found it compelling”.

Clare Matterson, Director of Medicine, Society and History at the Wellcome Trust, added:

“The prize aims to examine the links between medicine, culture and society by celebrating excellent writing and bringing it to the attention of a broad and varied audience”.

Jo Brand’s judging panel included BBC science journalist Quentin Cooper, Welsh poet and non-fiction writer Gwyneth Lewis, physician and author Raymond Tallis and Richard Barnett, expert in the history of modern medicine. The shortlisted books were:

The shortlist::

Havi Carel - Illness - (Acumen Publishing)

Brian Dillon - Tormented Hope - (Penguin - Ireland)

Andrea Gillies - Keeper -(Short Books)

Allegra Goodman - Intuition - (Atlantic Books)

Jonny Steinberg - Three Letter Plague - (Random House/Vintage)

Abraham Verghese - Cutting For Stone - Random House/Chatto)

To find out more about The Wellcome Trust Book Prize please visit http://www.wellcomebookprize.org