This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev has won the 2020 Gordon Burn Prize, which is open to books from the U.S., U.K., and Ireland and recognizes the year's "boldest, most ambitious and uncompromising work."
Organizers called This Is Not Propaganda, published in the U.S. by PublicAffairs, "a compelling, insightful and disturbing book about our ever-shifting world. Mixing case studies, analysis and family history, Peter Pomerantsev broadens his scope outwards from Moscow and London to a more global canvas, as he looks at the origins and spiralling problems of the disinformation age. Timely and important, it confirms Pomerantsev as one of our most stylish, dexterous and important new non-fiction writers."
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Amrou Al-Kadhi has won the 2020 Polari First Book Prize for Life as a Unicorn and Kate Davies has won the Polari Prize for non-debut talent for In at the Deep End. The Polari Prizes are U.K. awards that "celebrate literature that explores the LGBTQ+ experience."
Organizers said Life as a Unicorn is "an honest, heart-breaking and often hilarious account of the author's journey from god-fearing Muslim boy enraptured with their mother, to a vocal, queer drag queen estranged from their family."
Judge Andrew McMillan called In at the Deep End an "open, generous, bold and unashamedly commercial novel that deals quite rarely with lesbian love, lesbian sex and lesbian eroticism."