Join us for the live announcement of the winner of the 2020 Pushkin House Book Prize in the company of the jury and shortlisted authors.
Six highly readable and important new books offering fresh insights into Russia covering history, politics, literature, film, current affairs and environmental issues are under consideration for a record £10,000 prize this year.
The Pushkin House Russian Book Prize was created to encourage public understanding and intelligent debate about the Russian-speaking world. The prize is for a book published in English, but translations from other languages, including of course Russian, are encouraged and actively sought. The Pushkin Prize is generously supported by Douglas Smith (author and winner of the inaugural award in 2013), Stephanie Ellis-Smith, and the Polonsky Foundation.
Serhii Plokhy, professor of history at Harvard University and chair of the judges, said: “The books selected for the shortlist this year are exceptionally good. They combine scholarly rigour with engaging writing style, raise important questions and bring to the reader numerous and often unexpected insights into the history, culture and politics that matter today the most. We have a difficult but exciting task ahead of us: choosing the best of the best, primus inter pares. Stay tuned.”
The six 2020 shortlisted titles are:
Stalin's Scribe: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov by Brian Boeck
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth
An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent by Owen Matthews
The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev
This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia by Joan Neuberger
The full 2020 jury:
The panel of judges for the 2020 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize is chaired by Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University and twice winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize. Its other members are Celestine Bohlen, who teaches journalism at Science Po in Paris, is a contributor to the New York Times and former Moscow correspondent; Julia Safronova, associate professor and chair, Department of History of European University at Saint Petersburg University; and Richard Wright, Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, and former EU Ambassador to the Russian Federation and Director of the UN Agency for Palestine refugees.
More information about the prize and each of the shortlisted 2020 titles
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