Naomi Klein wins the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing

Attended the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing ceremony yesterday evening. It was a small affair compared to other award ceremonies I have attended but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the panellists.

The setting for the ceremony was Mead hall in the Warwick Arts Centre surrounded by some wacky art.





Naomi Klien won the £50,000 award for her controversial book 'The Shock Doctrine'.


The Shock Doctrine


Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick's Professor Nigel Thrift addressing the audience

In this book, Naomi argues against the well accepted free market policies as given by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. She also talks about a group of people who profit when disasters occurs around the World, whom she refers to as "the shock doctors".


Naomi accepting the prize


Naomi posing for the cameras

I am really proud to have been involved in the initial judging panels. It was really a tough process considering the theme this year was "complexity" and the fact that it was cross-disciplinary open to substantial pieces of writing in the English language and in any genre or form. This includes translations from other languages.

Selecting the winner for this year went through several rounds and the longlist of 20 titles came out in December last year. The list was finally whittled down to a short-list of six international titles.

Was slightly surprised because both the cover design and the title on the Amazon.com site is slightly different from the one I have. It costs £9.99 at the University book store but I got it at a special price of only £7.99 and I had it autographed by the author as well.

You can now get this International bestseller from Amazon.com