Six finalists for �20,000 award acclaimed as 'reflection of a remarkable publishing year'
Edmund de Waal's much-heralded and bestselling history of his family, The Hare with Amber Eyes, has missed out on a place on the �20,000 Samuel Johnson prize shortlist to more traditional biographies of Caravaggio and Bismarck.
De Waal, who tells his family's story through 264 miniature Japanese carvings, or netsuke, took the Costa biography award earlier this year, but was beaten onto the final line-up for the UK's premier non-fiction award by Andrew Graham Dixon's "compellingly vivid" history of the dark and dangerous life of the great painter Caravaggio, and by Jonathan Steinberg's "astonishing story" of the uniter of Germany, Bismarck: A Life. Other big names to fall by the wayside this year include the longlisted New Yorker editor David Remnick's life of Barack Obama, The Bridge, and Donald Sturrock's Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl.
Instead, judges selected Frank Dik�tter's "shocking and eye-opening" history of China between 1958 and 1962, Mao's Great Famine, Maya Jasanoff's recreation of the journeys of the American loyalists left behind by the British evacuation in the 18th century, Liberty's Exiles, Genome author Matt Ridley's "refreshing and incisive" counter-blast to pessimism, The Rational Optimist, and John Stubbs's "swaggering" exploration of the Cavaliers of the English Civil War, Reprobates.
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre, a historian and journalist, said that the shortlist of six books was "a tribute to the breadth and depth of non-fiction writing, a reflection of a remarkable publishing year in which more books have been considered for the prize than ever before".
Macintyre is joined on the judging panel by journalist and author Sam Leith, historian and broadcaster Amanda Vickery, biographer Brenda Maddox and Prospect editor-at-large David Goodhart.
"As chairman of the judges, I find myself feeling, even before we begin our final deliberations, that while one of these great books certainly deserves to win, five do not deserve to lose," he said.
The winner of the prize, which will be announced on 6 July, will join an eclectic line-up of former winners including a biography of Pushkin by TJ Binyon, an exploration of whales by Philip Hoare and Nothing to Envy, a journalistic investigation into the real lives of North Koreans in the 21st century by Barbara Demick, which won last year's award.
The shortlist:
Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dik�tter
Caravaggio by Andrew Graham Dixon
Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
Reprobates by John Stubbs
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/15/samuel-johnson-prize-shortlist
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