Rahman, Benson win 2015 James Tait Black Prizes

In the UK, the winners of the James Tait Black Prizes for fiction and biography have been announced, with debut novelist Zia Haider Rahman winning the fiction prize for In the Light of What We Know (Picador) and Richard Benson winning in the biography category for The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Yorkshire Family (Bloomsbury). Fiction prize chair Randall Stevenson said Rahman’s book ‘explores problematic areas of politics and finance, which are often exiled from the pages of fiction’ and praised Rahman’s ‘ability to locate the personal in the political’. Biography judge Jonathan Wild said Benson’s biographical study of his Yorkshire mining family ‘represents a remarkable reclamation of a once prevalent social group now almost entirely gone’. The books were selected from shortlists of four in each category, which can be viewed here. Founded in 1919, the £10,000 (A$21,140) prizes are awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh and judged by senior academics at the university with the assistance of postgraduate student judges. This year’s winners were announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. For more information, visit the website here.

Category: International news