The winners of this year’s prestigious James Tait Black Prizes have been announced.
This year's winning titles are On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, translated by Katharine Halls and The First and Last King of Haiti by Marlene L. Daut.
A darkly comic exploration of displacement and identity in the UK asylum system and a re-examination of the extraordinary life of the only king in Haiti’s history have won the illustrious awards, which were founded in 1919.
The winner of this year’s fiction prize is On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, translated by Katharine Halls (Peirene Press), and The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (Yale University Press) has been awarded the biography prize.
Showcasing the vibrancy of contemporary publishing, the James Tait Black Prizes are judged by University literature scholars and students who award the honours to the best works of fiction and biography each year.
Fiction favourite
In a record year for submissions, the winning titles were decided from more than 500 entries, with five titles shortlisted for each prize. The winners were commended for taking creative risks and pushing the boundaries of form, style and subject matter.
Shady Lewis’s winning fiction title, On the Greenwich Line (Peirene Press), translated by Katharine Halls, follows an Egyptian-born housing officer navigating the lives of migrants and refugees in East London.
A sharp study of displacement, bureaucracy and belonging, the novel has been praised for its dark humour, compassionate storytelling and vivid portrayal of contemporary urban life, establishing its author as a distinctive new voice in contemporary fiction.
On the Greenwich Line author Shady Lewis and translator Katharine Halls.
Shady Lewis is an Egyptian novelist and journalist whose writing centres on cultural and political intersections within and beyond the Arab world. He lives in London, where he has spent many years employed by the National Health Service and local authority housing departments. He has published three novels to date and a travel diary.
Katharine Halls is an Arabic-to-English translator from Cardiff, Wales. Her critically acclaimed translation of Ahmed Naji’s prison memoir Rotten Evidence was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and her translation of Raja Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace, with Adam Talib, received the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award.
Best biography
The Biography prize has been awarded to The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (Yale University Press), which tells the extraordinary story of a formerly enslaved man who rose to become the only king in Haiti’s history.
Exploring Henry Christophe’s role in securing Haitian independence and his vision to build a powerful Black nation in the aftermath of colonial rule, Daut re-examines Christophe’s complex legacy while placing Haiti and its revolution at the centre of global history.
Marlene L. Daut is an award-winning author and scholar, and Professor of French and Black Studies at Yale University. She has also authored several influential studies on Haitian history and has written for The New York Times, Essence, Harper's Bazaar and the LA Review of Books.
This year's Biography Prize was awarded to Marlene L. Daut for The First and Last King of Haiti.
The Prizes have been presented by the University of Edinburgh since 1919 and are the only major British book awards judged by literature scholars and students, with a £10,000 prize awarded to each winning title.
This year’s James Tait Black Prize winners demonstrate the remarkable power of literature to illuminate lives, histories and communities that are often overlooked. On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, translated by Katharine Halls, is a deeply humane and sharply observed novel about migration and belonging in contemporary Britain, while The First and Last King of Haiti by Marlene L. Daut offers a powerful re-examination of Haiti’s revolutionary history through the life of Henry Christophe. Together, these works reflect the ambition, originality and global perspective that the prizes have celebrated for more than a century.
Professor Alex Thomson
Head of the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
