Two books have won the $50,000 Gotham Book Prize: Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Movement: New York's Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car by Nicole Gelinas (Fordham University Press). The authors will split the prize.
The Gotham Book Prize was created by Bradley Tusk, founder of bookstore P&T Knitwear in Manhattan, and Howard Wolfson of Bloomberg Philanthropies early in the pandemic to honor the best book published that calendar year--either fiction or nonfiction--that either is about New York City or takes place in New York City.
Organizers said, "In Paradise Bronx, Ian Frazier has written a compelling narrative that sweeps the reader up in the pulsing culture, diverse lives, and fascinating past and present of our northernmost borough. In Movement, Nicole Gelinas masterfully unpacks the people and politics that have influenced our transportation networks, and their immense influence on our current moment and shared future."
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Palestinian author Yasmin Zaher's debut novel The Coin (published in the U.S. by Catapult) won the £20,000 (about $26,710) Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, celebrating international literary excellence in all its forms--including poetry, novels, short stories and drama--by authors 39 years old or under.
Chair of judges Namita Gokhale said, "Zaher brings complexity and intensity to the page through her elegantly concise writing: The Coin is a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour. It fizzes with electric energy. Yasmin Zaher is an extraordinary winner to mark twenty years of this vital prize."