BEN LERNER WINS ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION

American writer Ben Lerner has won the Orwell prize for political fiction for his novel Transcription, which examines technology and memory. Karen Bartlett won the nonfiction prize for The Escape from Kabul, an account of Afghan women lawyers who faced threats after the fall of Kabul in 2021. The prizes, worth £5,000 each, recognise books that advance George Orwell's ambition to elevate political writing to an art form.

Transcription follows a narrator who travels to Providence, Rhode Island, to interview an eccentric German intellectual named Thomas. The narrator's phone falls into a sink in his hotel room, leaving him without a recording device, yet he continues the interview without informing Thomas of this fact. Judging chair Fiammetta Rocco, who previously led the International Booker prize for two decades, described Transcription as a "forensic study of our insatiable appetite for new technology" that explores "the unreliable stories we tell ourselves about hunger, love and connection." Rocco stated the novel is "funny, brainy and timely" and called Lerner deserving of household-name status.

The fiction shortlist included eight other titles: A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia, Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn, Torch by Susan Choi, John of John by Douglas Stuart, The Comfort of Distant Stars by IO Echeruo, This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin, and Uprising by Tahmima Anam. The fiction judging panel comprised Rocco, academics Scarlett Baron and Olivette Otele, and Cal Revely-Calder, literary editor of the Telegraph. Rohan Silva, former policy adviser and founder of Libreria bookshop in Spitalfields, London, praised Bartlett's nonfiction winner as "taut and crisp" and commended its focus on Afghan female judges.