By Emma Saunders, Culture reporter
Getty ImagesCanadian writer and activist Naomi Klein has won the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for her book Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.
It starts as a tale about what it’s like to be mistaken for somebody else – Klein is often confused with controversial US author Naomi Wolf.
The critically acclaimed 2023 work delves into the impact of the digital world – including social media and AI – on our culture, politics and identity.
American author VV Ganeshananthan picked up the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her second novel, Brotherless Night, which depicts a family fractured by the Sri Lankan civil war.
The winners were announced at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening.
‘Spellbinding storytelling’
It took Ganeshananthan two decades to write her novel.
She beat the likes of Irish author and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright and Australian author Kate Grenville to the top prize.
Ganeshananthan was previously longlisted in 2009 with her debut novel Love Marriage.
Chair of the judges for the fiction prize, author Monica Ali, said: “Brotherless Night is a brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel that bears witness to the intimate and epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war.
“In rich, evocative prose, Ganeshananthan creates a vivid sense of time and place and an indelible cast of characters.
“Her commitment to complexity and clear-eyed moral scrutiny combines with spellbinding storytelling to render Brotherless Night a masterpiece of historical fiction.”
The novel follows Sashi, a 16-year-old aspiring doctor, growing up in Jaffna in the 1980s. Her close family is torn apart by the onset of civil war.
‘Call-to-arms’
Doppelganger starts as a tale of the author’s struggles to stop being mistaken for Naomi Wolf and goes on to delve into all manner of topics, including numerous conspiracy theories.
Wolf is best known for her acclaimed third-wave feminist book The Beauty Myth and other works such as Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.
In 2019, one of her books was cancelled by a US publisher over accuracy concerns and in 2021, she was suspended from X (then known as Twitter) for spreading anti-vaccine misinformation.
Suzannah Lipscomb, chair of judges for the non-fiction award, said of Klein’s winning book: “This brilliant and layered analysis demonstrates humour, insight and expertise. Klein’s writing is both deeply personal and impressively expansive. Doppelganger is a courageous, humane and optimistic call-to-arms that moves us beyond black and white, beyond Right and Left, inviting us instead to embrace the spaces in between.”
Klein first rose to fame with her 1999 debut No Logo, which tackled the rise of corporate brands and cheap labour. It became an international bestseller.
Her other books include The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal.
The awards honour work written in English by female writers from around the world, and the winners each pick up £30,000 ($38,000) in prize money.
The new non-fiction prize was in part borne out of research published last year which revealed a growing pay gap between male and female authors, and a comparative lack of visibility for female non-fiction writers in the media. It also found there was limited female representation in non-fiction book prize lists.
Previous winners of the fiction award – now in its 29th year – include Barbara Kingsolver, Susanna Clarke and Maggie O’Farrell.
Shortlisted books for Women’s Fiction Prize
- VV Ganeshananthan – Brotherless Night (winner)
- Anne Enright – The Wren, The Wren
- Kate Grenville – Restless Dolly Maunder
- Isabella Hammad – Enter Ghost
- Claire Kilroy – Soldier Sailor
- Aube Rey Lescure – River East, River West
Shortlisted books for Women’s Non-Fiction Prize
- Naomi Klein – Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (winner)
- Laura Cumming – Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death
- Noreen Masud – A Flat Place: A Memoir
- Tiya Miles – All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake
- Madhumita Murgia – Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI
- Safiya Sinclair – How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir
