Question 7 by Australian writer Richard Flanagan has been named winner of the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2024.
Flanagan is currently trekking in the Tasmanian wilderness.
However, in a pre-recorded acceptance speech, Flanagan said he will “delay” taking receipt of the prize money until Baillie Gifford puts forward a plan to further reduce its investments in fossil fuels and increase investment in renewable energy.
“On that day, I will be grateful not only for this generous gift, but for the knowledge that by coming together in good faith, with respect and goodwill, it remains possible yet to make this world better …” said Flanagan.
“The world is complex. These matters are difficult. None of us are clean. All of us are complicit.
“Major booksellers that sell my books are owned by oil companies, major publishers that publish my friends are owned by fascists and authoritarians …
“As each of us is guilty, each of us too bears a responsibility to act.”
The winner was announced by Chair of Judges Isabel Hilton at a ceremony hosted in London and supported by The Blavatnik Family Foundation.
Hilton said she had asked her fellow judges if they had any concerns about supporting the prize.
“None of them did, and nor did I, frankly,” said Hilton. “So we got that conversation over with at the start, and then we concentrated on the books.
“These are serious books that need serious attention, and the Baillie Gifford Prize helps them to get that attention.”
With his win, Flanagan becomes the first author to win the double of the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about “the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows.”
Exploring the value of life, Flanagan tackles “far-ranging seemingly disparate personal and historical topics, from H.G. Wells’ affair with Rebecca West, to the atomic bomb and his own near-death experience, expertly documenting life’s chain reaction: from past to present to future.”
Question 7 was chosen by this year’s judging panel: journalist, broadcaster and founder of China Dialogue, Isabel Hilton (chair); author and investigative journalist, Heather Brooke; comment and culture editor for New Scientist, Alison Flood; culture editor of Prospect, Peter Hoskin; writer and critic, Tomiwa Owolade; and author, restaurant critic and journalist, Chitra Ramaswamy.