Orwell book prize winners
Claire Keegan and Sally Hayden take top political writing honours
Journalist Sally Hayden and novelist Claire Keegan have won the 2022 Orwell Prizes for non-fiction and ficton writing respectively. Hayden was awarded the Orwell Prize for Political Writing for My Fourth Time, We Drowned, described by the prize judges as “truly a book for our times” and an “extraordinary exploration’ of the migrant crisis across North Africa”.
Irish author Keegan won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for her novel Small Things Like These described by the judges as an “unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and tenderness”.
Set in a small Irish town in 1985, the book centres on coal and timber merchant Bill Furlong, who encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Catholic Church as he does his rounds during the lead-up to Christmas.
Hayden and Keegan, who each receive £3,000, were chosen from shortlists announced in May.
Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, said the winners have, “in very different ways, written gripping stories about things that should alarm us: there are awful truths right at the heart of our societies and systems”.
Because of their “wit, elegance and compassion”, both books “also help us think about the choices we make, and how to make the future better”, she said.
The Orwell Prizes are awarded to one nonfiction and one fiction work that each comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition “to make political writing into an art” and are presented alongside separate prizes for journalism.
Among Orwell’s most famous books are the Road to Wigan Pier and Aninmal Farm.