Weymouth wins inaugural Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing

In the UK, Adam Weymouth has won the inaugural £10,000 (A$19,043) Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing for Lone Wolf (Hutchinson Heinemann), reported the Bookseller.

Weymouth’s account of a young wolf’s 1000-mile journey to the Italian Alps also won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

“Lone Wolf follows wolf Slavc, who in 2011 crossed paths with a female wolf, leading to more than a hundred wolves returning to the Italian Alps a decade later” said the Bookseller. “Weymouth retraced Slavc’s route to examine rewilding, climate change and traditional life in Europe’s mountain communities.”

The book was chosen from a shortlist that also included Russia Starts Here (Howard Amos, Bloomsbury Continuum), Night Train to Odesa (Jen Stout, Polygon), Is a River Alive? (Robert Macfarlane, Penguin), Anima (Kapka Kassabova, Vintage), and Greyhound (Joanna Pocock, Fitzcarraldo).

The Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing recognises “a published British or European author whose work encourages understanding between peoples and across societies”.

Chair of the judges Colin Thubron said: “We admired Lone Wolf especially for the vividness and skill with which its author interweaves his 1000-mile trek in a wolf’s paw tracks with the seismic social and ecological changes that inform his way. This is a celebration of wildness and of its right to exist, but grounded in an unsentimental understanding of its cost to humans. It’s a beautifully written and far-reaching book.”

Category: International awards International news