Cundill History Prize 2026 shortlist announced
In Canada, the 2026 Cundill History Prize shortlist has been announced.
The 8 shortlisted titles, selected from 400 international submissions, are:
- The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence (Louise Brangan, Bodley Head)
- Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult (Jonathan Cheng, Knopf)
- Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (Sam Dalrymple, HarperCollins)
- Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History (Linford D Fisher, Liveright)
- Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean (Eric T Jennings, Yale University Press)
- The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews (Alexander Lee, Picador)
- We the People: A History of the US Constitution (Jill Lepore, John Murray)
- John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law (Beth Lew-Williams, Belknap Press).
Jury chair Emily Greenwood said: “Each book on this list invites readers into an absorbing prose world and leaves them with a different reckoning of history. Taken together, they uncover histories that have been forgotten, silenced, or simply not intuited because we lacked the evidence and interpretative frameworks to grasp unobvious connections and to question settled accounts.
Crucially, each shortlisted work encompasses different domains of history and evinces subtle, interdisciplinary ways of knowing the past and how we relate to it, blending fresh archival research, deep historical acumen, and strong narrative verve.”
Administered by McGill University in Montreal, the Cundill History Prize, worth US$75,000, is awarded annually to the book that demonstrates excellence across the prize’s guiding criteria: craft, communication and consequence. The two runners-up each receive US$10,000.
Last year’s winner was Australian historian Lyndal Roper.
More information is available on the website.
Category: International awards International news
