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Colum McCann, Jonathan Safran Foer and Hadley Freeman are among seven writers shortlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize.
The annual £4,000 award, run in association with JW3 community centre in London, is given to the best book to translate the idea of Jewishness for the general reader.
This year's shortlist features three works of fiction and four non-fiction books, with titles covering a diverse range of subjects, from life in the American Charedi community to the Russian empire in the late 19th century, to climate change and the Holocaust.
It includes McCann's “unusually honourable and balanced narrative of Israeli and Palestinian life and interaction”, Apeirogon (Bloomsbury); Freeman's “beautiful, intelligent, moving and brilliantly researched” memoir House of Glass (4th Estate); and Safran Foer's “piercingly intelligent” call to action on climate change, We are the Weather (Hamish Hamilton).
Also on the list are On Division by Goldie Goldbloom (Farrah Straus & Giroux), described by judges as an “empathetic, humorous, kind, loving view of part of the Charedi community”; and “superbly propulsive” novel The Slaughterman's Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits, translated by Orr Scharf (Maclehose).
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb (Little, Brown), praised as an “uplifting and quirky account of a granddaughter’s love for her grandmother” also makes the cut; as does When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann (Simon & Schuster), a “moving multi-layered account of a daughter coming to terms with her father’s hidden past”.
This year’s judging panel is comprised of Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner; broadcaster, writer and filmmaker Bidisha; author and Economist magazine culture editor A D Miller; and biographer and historian Anne Sebba.
Janner-Klausner, chair of the judging panel, said: “The literary world has produced a wealth of wonderful works about Jewish life which, during the past difficult year, enabled us to enjoy such powerful and emotive literature, as reflected in this fantastic shortlist.
“It is a shortlist that collectively shares an understanding of the joys and pains of our history, the depth of Jewishness and the Jewish world, and the privilege of sharing that with the wider world.”
The Wingate Prize winner will be announced during an event with the judges, hosted online on 7th March.