The Orwell Foundation has released this year's finalists for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction as well as the Orwell Prize for Political Writing (nonfiction), both of which award £3,000 (about $3,820) to the winner and recognize works that strive to meet Orwell's own ambition "to make political writing into an art." The winners will be named June 27. Shortlists for all four Orwell Prize categories are available here. The book finalists are:
Political Writing
Eve by Cat Bohannon
The Achilles Trap by Steve Coll
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein
The Picnic by Matthew Longo
Revolutionary Acts by Jason Okundaye
The Incarcerations by Alpa Shah
We Are Free to Change the World by Lyndsey Stonebridge
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall
Our Enemies will Vanish by Yaroslav Trofimov
Political Fiction
Ocean Stirrings by Merle Collins
James by Percival Everett
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
My Friends by Hisham Matar
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan
Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan
The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell
Blackouts by Justin Torres
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The winners of the IndieReader Discovery Awards, sponsored by IndieReader, have been announced. Winners in the many categories can be seen here. The winners of the fiction and nonfiction categories are:
Fiction:
First Place: Lightning Bugs and Aliens: A Small Town Coming-of-Age Story by Daniel Babka
Second Place: Vessels of Wrath by Thomas Holland
Third Place: Marriage and Hanging by Genevieve Morrissey
Nonfiction:
First Place: The Santa Book: A True Story by Erin Eby
Second Place: Nurture: How to Raise Kids Who Love Food, Their Bodies, and Themselves by Heidi Schauster
Third Place: A Cup of Tea on the Commode: My Multi-Tasking Adventures of Caring for Mom, and How I Survived to Tell the Tale by Mark Steven Porro