Salman Rushdie's 'Knife' attack memoir longlisted for UK non-fiction prize

London: Booker Prize-winning Salman Rushdie may become the first author to bag a prestigious literary prize in both fiction and non-fiction genres after his account of surviving an on-stage assassination attempt was named on the longlist of the GBP 50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in London on Thursday.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by the celebrated Indian-American-British author is among 12 books on the longlist for one of the world’s leading awards that aims to reward the best of non-fiction and is open to authors of any nationality. The judges for this year’s prize said his memoir presents an “intimate and personal account of a world-historical event” as the New York based author recovers from the near-fatal stabbing.

“Reaching a longlist in a year when so many wonderful non-fiction books have been published was never going to be easy, but I could not be happier with the result,” said London-based journalist-broadcaster Isabel Hilton, chair of judges.

“It is, of course, a list of remarkable and outstanding books, and they shed new and brilliant light on our contemporary world through explorations of history, of memory, of science and nature. Collectively this wonderful reflection of creativity, of critical thinking and great writing left us in no doubt that the non-fiction world is overflowing with energy and talent,” she said.

Australian author Richard Flanagan is another fellow Booker Prize-winning novelist longlisted for the non-fiction prize for Question 7, which accounts his own near-death experience.

Others on the longlist include American authors Gary J Bass for Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia; Jonathan Blitzer for Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis; Annie Jacobsen for Nuclear War: A Scenario; and Adam Shatz The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Vietnamese-American Việt Thanh Nguyen makes it for A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial and Belgian author David Van Reybrouck is in the running for Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World.

The remaining are British authors Rachel Clarke for The Story of a Heart; Rachel Cockerell for Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land; Sue Prideaux for Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin; and Helen Scales for What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean.

The 2024 judging panel includes UK-based author, restaurant critic and journalist Chitra Ramaswamy; author and investigative journalist Heather Brooke; New Scientist editor Alison Flood; Prospect editor Peter Hoskin; and writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade. Their selection was made from 349 books published between November last year and October this year and they note that the authors on the 2024 longlist write about a range of topics that affect “our past, present and future”.

The announcement of the six books shortlisted for this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, each receiving GBP 5,000, will take place on October 10 at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the winner of the GBP 50,000 prize will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 19.