Roper on 2025 Cundill History Prize shortlist

Australian historian and author Lyndal Roper has been named on the 2025 Cundill History Prize shortlist.

The prize, worth US$75,000 (A$115,137), aims to highlight ‘books that uncover neglected histories and speak to our current context of conflict, protest and the concern with freedom across the globe’.

Chosen from over 400 submissions, the 2025 shortlisted titles are:

• The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life (Sophia Rosenfeld, Princeton University Press)
• America, América: A New History of the New World (Greg Grandin, Torva)
• The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Marlene L Daut, Knopf)
• A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation (Kornel Chang, Harvard University Press)
• The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West (Martha A Sandweiss, Princeton University Press)
• Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (Lyndal Roper, Basic Books)
• To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Benjamin Nathans, Princeton University Press)
• Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Emily Callaci, Allen Lane).

The winner will be announced on 30 October. Two runners-up will each receive US$10,000 (A$15,351).

Administered by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, the Cundill Prize is awarded annually to an individual from any country for a book that has had, or is likely to have, ‘a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history’.

This year’s judges include Princeton University Dayton-Stockton professor of history and 2022 Cundill History Prize finalist Ada Ferrer (chair), Sunil Amrith, François Furstenberg, Afua Hirsch, and Francesca Trivellato.

Last year’s winner was Kathleen DuVal for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America (Random House US).

More information about the Cundill Prize is available on the prize website.

Category: Awards Local news