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The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize shortlist is dominated by "unknown female voices who offer fiction and memoir of urgent currency."
Publisher Hogarth has published two of the six shortlisted titles; Shani Boianjiu's The People of Forever Are Not Afraid and Anouk Markovits' I Am Forbidden. The four other shortlisted titles are Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision (Pushkin Press), Otto Dov Kulka's Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death (Allen Lane), Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet (Granta), and Yudit Kiss' The Summer My Father Died (Telegram-Saqi).
Chair of the judging panel Rachel Lasserson said: "As ever, the judging panel has focussed upon the quality and currency of the work, rather than the identity of the author. Strikingly, this year's shortlist is dominated by hitherto unknown female voices who offer fiction and memoir of urgent currency. The shortlist introduces the reader to new and shocking worlds: from the female underclass of the IDF to the choice-less tower of Satmar Hasidim via the wreckage of communist Europe and the family lager of Auschwitz. These singular six books attest to the infinite diversity of Jewish experience in 2013."
The Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize is awarded to a book that explores themes of Jewish concern in any of its myriad possible forms either explicitly or implicitly.
The winner will be announced at a ceremony during Jewish Book Week at Kings Place on 26th February 2014.