South Asian writer Pankaj Mishra wins 2024 $75K Weston International Award
The prize recognizes the career achievement of an international author for nonfiction work
Indian writer Pankaj Mishra, known for his writing on the Global South, Western imperialism in Asia and contemporary spirituality, has won the 2024 Weston International Award.
The $75,000 prize is a companion to the existing Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, which is awarded annually to a Canadian author for a single work of nonfiction.
The Weston International Award recognizes the career achievement of an international author for a body of nonfiction work. Eligible international authors must have published at least three books of outstanding literary merit, in the genre of nonfiction, that are written in English or else widely available in translation.
Mishra is a writer based in London and Mashobra, India. He has written eight books of nonfiction, including Age of Anger, From the Ruins of Empire and Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, and two novels, The Romantics and Run and Hide. He is an opinion columnist for Bloomberg and contributor for The Guardian, New Yorker and London Review of Books among other publications.
"Through a compelling and essential body of work that braids memoir, philosophy, history, sociology and criticism, Mishra proves he is a master of disassembling and uplifting magmatic argument and pressing issues of identity, nationalism and belonging," said the jury in a press statement.
"Speaking to a time when democracy itself is at stake, he is a light cutting through shadow,"
Mishra was selected by an international advisory committee and a Canadian jury. The advisory committee is comprised of U.K.-based broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, British-born writer Pico Iyer and American historian, biographer and journalist Sam Tanenhaus.
The Canadian jury is author and naturalist Trevor Herriot, author Helen Humphreys, author and environmental historian Jessica J. Lee, writer Kyo Maclear and author, journalist and editor Harley Rustad.
Mishra will give a talk at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on Monday, Sept. 16 to discuss his career and work. Tickets are available on the Weston International Award website.
Robert Mcfarlane was the inaugural winner of the award last year.
The Writers' Trust of Canada is an organization that supports Canadian writers through literary awards, fellowships, financial grants, mentorships and more. It gives out 12 prizes in recognition of the year's best in fiction, nonfiction and short story, as well as mid-career and lifetime achievement awards.
It was founded in 1976 by Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson, Margaret Laurence and David Young.
