Serhii Plokhy won the £30,000 (about $38,500) Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction for Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy. Chair of the judges Fiammetta Rocco said the winning book "is an unprecedented retelling of a familiar disaster. It is a horror story--of political cynicism and scientific ignorance--in which the world was saved only by heroism and luck. This extraordinary account leaves you wondering: could the narrowly missed nuclear Armageddon of Chernobyl happen again, with even worse consequences?"
Mark Urquhart, partner at Baillie Gifford, commented: "We are delighted that Chernobyl has won the 2018 prize. This cautionary tale feels extremely relevant to a world grappling with global energy issues and deserves to be widely read. The quality of the short list must have made this an extremely hard decision for the judging panel with many fine works of nonfiction proving again the strength of the genre."