Michael Frank won the the £4,000 (about $5,590) Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize, which is "awarded to the best book, fiction or nonfiction, to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader," for his family memoir The Mighty Franks, the Bookseller reported.
Describing the book as "beautifully written, perfectly paced, uncomfortable, tender and surprising," Times Literary Supplement fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig, who was one of the judges, said The Mighty Franks "is a dazzlingly vivid portrait of an eccentric Los Angeles family. Frank's paternal aunt and maternal uncle were married; his grandmothers shared a flat. The whole clan lived within minutes of one another. Presiding over this claustrophobic set up was the domineering presence of the author's aunt: a successful and vivacious Hollywood screenwriter who demanded total devotion and availability from those on whom she showered her affections.
"Although it wears its Jewishness lightly, the background culture pulses unmistakably throughout: in the pull of the old world of Mitteleuropa, in the growing pains of American assimilation, in the vexed and complex domestic dynamics at its heart. This is both a book about a very specific Jewish family and in some sense about all families. As such it should be read, reread and enjoyed by everyone."