We are delighted to announce our 2019 longlist
With gender, identity and mental health emerging as prominent themes, the longlist for the 10th anniversary prize is:
- Amateur: A true story about what makes a man by Thomas Page McBee
- Astroturf by Matthew Sperling
- Educated by Tara Westover
- Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
- Heart: A history by Sandeep Jauhar
- Mind on Fire: A memoir of madness and recovery by Arnold Thomas Fanning
- Murmur by Will Eaves
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
- Polio: The odyssey of eradication by Thomas Abraham
- Sight by Jessie Greengrass
- The Trauma Cleaner: One woman’s extraordinary life in death, decay and disaster by Sarah Krasnostein
- This Really Isn’t About You by Jean Hannah Edelstein
Authors from the UK, USA, India, Australia, Nigeria and Ireland are in contention for the £30,000 prize.
Of the five fiction titles on the list, three are by debut novelists: Jessie Greengrass considers motherhood in her Women’s Prize shortlisted novel Sight; Akwaeke Emezi presents a metaphysical sense of self through physical and spiritual worlds in Freshwater; and Matthew Sperling’s brilliantly funny Astroturf gives an insight into toxic masculinity through the pursuit of perfection and performance-enhancing steroids.
The two further novels on the list look at what great bodily change can do to a person’s mind, with My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh chronicling a privileged New York woman’s decision to enter narcotic hibernation for a year, and Will Eaves fictionalising the chemical castration of mathematician Alan Turing in an extraordinary exploration of dreams, consciousness, science and the future in Murmur.
Memoirs dominate the seven non-fiction titles on the list, with modern masculinity untangled by Thomas Page McBee in Amateur, recounting his journey to become the first transgender man to box at Madison Square Garden, and Sarah Krasnostein’s astonishing biography The Trauma Cleaner uncovers the life of Sandra Pankhurst – husband, father, drag queen, sex worker, wife.
In Mind on Fire, Arnold Thomas Fanning gives a startlingly honest account of living with and recovering from psychosis, and Jean Hannah Edelstein shares her experience of facing the genetic cancer mutation that killed her father in This Really Isn’t About You. Mortality is also touched upon by cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar in Heart: A history, as he contemplates on his own family history and the medical pioneers who risked their careers to better understand this extraordinary organ.
Modern medicine and the attitudes towards medical innovation are also illuminated in Tara Westover’s critically acclaimed memoir about her survivalist upbringing, Educated. In the final non-fiction title on the list, Polio: The odyssey of eradication, Thomas Abraham reports on the widespread rejection of the polio vaccine and why a campaign to rid the world of a crippling disease became a hostage of geopolitics.
Elif Shafak commented on behalf of the judging panel:
“Chairing the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize alongside my esteemed fellow judges is a true honour and privilege. In a world that remains sadly divided into echo chambers and mental ghettoes, this prize is unique in its ability to connect various disciplines: medicine, health, literature, art and science. Reading and discussing at length all the books on our list has been fascinating from the very start. We now have a wonderful longlist, of which we are all very proud. Although it sure won’t be easy to choose the shortlist, and then, finally, the winner, I am thrilled about and truly grateful for this fascinating journey through stories, ideas, ground-breaking research and revolutionary knowledge.”
The shortlist for the prize will be announced on Tuesday 19 March, with the winner revealed at an evening ceremony on Wednesday 1 May at Wellcome Collection.