We are delighted to hear that Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s Stay With Me has been long listed for the Wellcome Book Prize 2018.
From the Book Brunch:
Five debuts amongst 12 titles in race for leading science prize
The longlist of twelve titles was selected by a judging panel chaired by Edmund de Waal with Dr Hannah Critchlow, Bryony Gordon, Sumit Paul-Choudhury and Sophie Ratcliffe.
Featuring popular science, memoir, lyrical meditation and medical history, the 2018 longlist is:
– Stay With Me (Canongate Books) by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Nigeria) Fiction
– The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine (Allen Lane, Penguin Press) by Lindsey Fitzharris (USA) Non-fiction
– In Pursuit of Memory: The fight against Alzheimer’s (John Murray) by Joseph Jebelli (UK) Non-fiction
– Plot 29: A memoir (4th Estate, HarperCollins) by Allan Jenkins (UK) Non-fiction
– The White Book (Portobello Books, Granta) by Han Kang (South Korea) translated by Deborah Smith (UK) Fiction
– With the End in Mind: Dying, death and wisdom in an age of denial (William Collins, HarperCollins UK) by Kathryn Mannix (UK) Non-fiction
– Midwinter Break (Jonathan Cape) by Bernard MacLaverty (Ireland) Fiction
– To Be a Machine: Adventures among cyborgs, utopians, hackers, and the futurists solving the modest problem of death (Granta Books) by Mark O’Connell (Ireland) Non-fiction
– I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen brushes with death (Tinder Press, Headline Publishing Group) by Maggie O’Farrell (UK/Ireland) Non-fiction
– Mayhem: A memoir (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books) by Sigrid Rausing (UK/Sweden) Non-fiction
– Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst (The Bodley Head, Vintage) by Robert Sapolsky (USA) Non-fiction
– The Vaccine Race: How scientists used human cells to combat killer viruses (Doubleday, Transworld) by Meredith Wadman (USA/Canada) Non-fiction
Authors from the UK, Ireland, USA, Nigeria and Canada are in contention alongside the first Swedish (Sigrid Rausing) and South Korean (Han Kang) authors to be longlisted for the £30,000 prize.
Five debut books appear on this year’s longlist: Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, The Butchering Art by Dr Lindsey Fitzharris, In Pursuit of Memory by Joseph Jebelli, To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell and With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix.
De Waal said: “The Wellcome Book Prize is unique in its reach across genres, and so the range of books that we have considered has been exhilarating in its extent and ambition. This is a remarkable time for readers, with a great flourishing of writing on ideas around science, medicine and health, lives and deaths, histories and futures. After passionate discussions we have arrived at our longlist for the Wellcome Book Prize 2018 and are proud to be part of this process of bringing to a wider public these 12 tremendous books that have moved, intrigued and inspired us. All of them bring something new to our understanding of what it is to be human.”
The shortlist for the prize will be announced on 20 March, with the winner revealed at an evening ceremony on 30 April at the Wellcome Collection.
Previous winners of the Prize include Maylis de Kerangal (author) and Jessica Moore (translator) for Mend the Living in 2017, Suzanne O’Sullivan for It’s All in Your Head in 2016, Marion Coutts for The Iceberg in 2015, Andrew Solomon for Far from the Tree in 2014, Thomas Wright for Circulation in 2012, Alice LaPlante for Turn of Mind in 2011, Rebecca Skloot for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in 2010 and Andrea Gillies for Keeper: Living with Nancy – a journey into Alzheimer’s in 2009.