Books by Linda Grant and Howard Jacobson have made it onto the shortlist for the 2020 Wingate Prize, awarded annually to the best book to “translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader”.
Jacobson’s Live a Little, a story of love between two people in their nineties, has been described by the judges as “rollicking good fun”, while Grant’s A Stranger City features both “easily recognisable, long-resident London Jews, as well as more exotic recent Jewish arrivals from Iran”.
Also making the shortlist were Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literacy Legacy by Benjamin Balint; Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen; Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance; Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart; and George Szirtes’s The Photographer at Sixteen.
Both fiction and non-fiction works are considered for the £4,000 prize, now in its 43rd year and jointly awarded by the Harold Hyam Wingate Charitable Foundation and JW3.
This year’s judging panel comprises critically acclaimed novelist and lecturer Dr Roopa Farooki; educator, writer and broadcaster Clive Lawton OBE; past Wingate Prize winner Philippe Sands QC and award-winning novelist Kim Sherwood.
Mr Lawton, chair of the judging panel, said: “With an already very strong long list, cutting it down to the usual six for the short list was always going to be difficult – so difficult in fact, that we came up with a short list of seven.
“Our primary criterion was excellent writing, but we also needed to feel that there was a rich story to tell and, of course, one which threw light on the realities of Jewish life.
“Though we did not make our selection with any other criteria in mind, fortuitously and gratifyingly, we have a wonderfully balanced short list of male and female authors, fiction and non-fiction, as well as books that explore the contemporary Jewish world and important aspects of the past.
“Reading these books has been an immense pleasure for all of the panel, but now comes the utterly challenging work of trying to decide which one wins.”
The winner will be announced at a ceremony at JW3 on March 16.
