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Ondaatje Prize

2022
Winner
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Shortlist
The Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore
Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
Writing the Camp by Yousif M Qasmiyeh
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Longlist
Class of ‘37 by Hester Barron & Claire Langhamer
Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton
Careless by Kirsty Capes
The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro
The Roles We Play by Sabba Khan
Corrigenda for Costafine Town by Jake Morris-Campbell
The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
Surviving Katyn: Stalin’s Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth by Jane Rogoyska
This One Sky Day by Leone Ross
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
Iberia by Julian Sayarer
I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain by Anita Sethi
Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia
C+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor
2021
Winner
The Butchers by Ruth Gilligan

Shortlist
This Lovely City by Louise Hare
Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones
Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Minya Powles
English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks
Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade
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Longlist
Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens by James Boyce
Out of Thin Air by Michael Crawley
The Beauty and the Terror by Catherine Fletcher
Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen
Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donoghue
Unofficial Britain by Gareth E Rees
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
2020
Winner
A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson

Shortlist
​​Surge by Jay Bernard
Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi
Underland by Robert Macfarlane
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
A Small Silence by Jumoke Verissimo
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Longlist
When the Tree Falls by Jane Clarke
On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons by Laura Cumming
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie
Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden
Nia by Robert Minhinnick
The Inside City  by Anita Mir
Lanny by Max Porter
The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time by Anna Sherman
2019
Winner
The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam

Shortlist
No Turning Back by Rania Abouzeid
Happiness by Aminatta Forna
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Crossway by Guy Stagg
Kings of the Yukon by Adam Weymouth

Longlist
Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers
Little by Edward Carey
Middle England by Jonathan Coe
Where the road runs out by Gaia Holmes
The Café de Move-on Blues by Christopher Hope
A Stranger’s Pose by Emmanuel Iduma
Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly
Arkady by Patrick Langley
A Line in the River by Jamal Mahjoub
Let Me Be Like Water by SK Perry
From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
The Dictionary of Animal Languages by Heidi Sopinka
The Valley at the Centre of Our World by Malachy Tallack
Wilding by Isabella Tree
2018
Winner
Mama Amazonica by Pascale Petit

Shortlist
The Epic City by Kushanava Choudhury
Once Upon a Time in the East by Xiaolu Guo
Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Border by Kapka Kassabova
Elmet by Fiona Mozley​
2017
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

Shortlist
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
In a Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie
Augustown by Kei Miller
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris
The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain
2016
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev
 
2015
Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood by Justin Marozzi
 
2014
This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood by Alan Johnson
 
2013
Scenes from Early Life by Philip Hensher
 
2012
The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya
 
2011
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
 
2010
The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica by Ian Thomson
 
2009
Sissinghurst: an Unfinished History by Adam Nicolson
 
2008
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb
 
2007
In The Country of Men by Hisham Matar
 
2006
The People’s Act of Love by James Meek
 
2005
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
 
2004
Hearing Birds Fly by Louisa Waugh

Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize

2002
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
 
2001
No Bones by Anna Burns
 
2000
Kit's Law by Donna Morrissey
 
1999
Our Fathers by Andrew O'Hagan
 
1998
The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden
 
1997
Traplines by Eden Robinson
 
1996
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
 
1995
Archangel by Paul Watkins
 
1994
Signals of Distress by Jim Crace
 
1993
The Lights Below by Carl MacDougall
 
1992
Ulverton by Adam Thorpe
 
1991
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
 
1990
Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci
 
1989
Fludd by Hilary Mantel
 
1988
The Blindfold Horse by Shusha Guppy
 
1986
The Bridge by Maggie Hemingway
 
1984
A Nation of Fools by Balraj Khanna
 
1983
Waterland by Graham Swift
 
1982
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
 
1981
A Breed of Heroes by Alan Judd
 
1980
Poppie by Elsa Joubert
 
1978
The Stone Arrow by Richard Herley
 
1977
Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai
 
1976
Victims by Eugene McCabe
 
1975
Black Faces, White Faces by Jane Gardam
 
1974
The Pandora Valley by Graham King
 
1973
Articles of Faith by Ronald Harwood
 
1973
I Didn't Know You Cared by Peter Tinniswood
 
1971
Last Cool Days by John Stewart
 
1970
Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul
 
1969
The Humming-Bird Tree by Ian McDonald
 
1968
The Round Tower by Catherine Cookson
 
1967
The Big Meeting by David Bean