Reading List · Literary Prizes
George Orwell wanted “to make political writing into an art”, and since 1994 a prize in his name has gone to the book that comes closest. The first winner was about the Baltic states breaking away from the Soviet Union; the most recent is about Afghan women judges escaping the Taliban. Since 2019 there has been a second book prize, for political fiction. Both are announced in June, around Orwell’s birthday.
By Lisanne Swart · 41 book winners since 1994 · Political writing and political fiction · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 22 September 2026
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The 2026 winners were announced on 25 June 2026 at UCL. The next shortlists usually follow in May and the winners on or around 25 June, Orwell’s birthday; this page is updated when they are out.
Quick answer
The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing, run by the Orwell Foundation at University College London. It has two book prizes: the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, given since 1994 (as the Book Prize until 2018), and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, given since 2019. Each is worth £5,000. The 2026 winners are Karen Bartlett’s The Escape from Kabul for political writing and Ben Lerner’s Transcription for political fiction.
How this page chooses
Two jobs, kept apart. The timeline further down lists every book winner, both prizes, from 1994 to 2026 — facts only.
The ten with a full entry are the winners of both prizes in the last five years, 2022 to 2026. There is no ranking in it. Under each one is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first; each year the political writing winner, then the political fiction winner. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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An account of the refugees held in detention centres in Libya on their way to Europe, built from years of messages that people inside sent Hayden on their phones, and of what European policy did to them.
Sally Hayden is an Irish journalist and photographer.
In the weeks before Christmas 1985, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in a small Irish town, finds out what is happening behind the walls of the convent next door, and has to decide what to do about it.
It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.
How the fire at Grenfell Tower in London came about in 2017: the cladding, the regulations, the warnings that were ignored, and the 72 people who died.
Apps reported on the Grenfell Tower inquiry for the housing magazine Inside Housing.
Two married men in 1890s London set out to write a book defending love between men, just as the trial of Oscar Wilde makes it more dangerous than ever.
It was Tom Crewe’s first novel.
On 19 August 1989 a picnic on the border between Hungary and Austria briefly opened a gate in the Iron Curtain, and hundreds of East Germans walked through it. Longo tells how it was organised and what it set off.
The picnic was held near the town of Sopron, in western Hungary.
Khaled, a Libyan student in London, is shot outside the Libyan embassy in 1984, when someone inside opens fire on a protest against Gaddafi. He cannot go home. The novel follows him and two friends over the decades of exile that follow.
It also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
The Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina’s account of the Ukrainian women who documented Russian war crimes after the full-scale invasion of 2022, a book she was writing when she was killed.
Amelina died in July 2023 after a Russian missile hit a restaurant in Kramatorsk; the book was published unfinished.
A return to the village of Ryan’s first novel, The Spinning Heart, ten years on, told in many voices: the neighbours, the young people who left and came back, and the trouble that comes to the village.
The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award in 2013.
When the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021, Afghanistan’s women judges and lawyers were in danger. Bartlett tells how a network of women judges around the world got nearly two hundred of them and their families out.
It was published in 2025 by Duckworth.
A writer travels to Providence to interview his ninety-year-old mentor. Before they start, his phone falls into water and breaks, and he does not tell the old man that nothing is being recorded.
At about 130 pages it is Lerner’s shortest novel.
All 41 book winners: political writing every year since 1994, political fiction since 2019. The years in red have a full entry above.
The political theorist Bernard Crick wrote the first full biography of George Orwell, published in 1980, and used its royalties to set up the prize. The first awards, in 1994, went to Anatol Lieven’s book on the Baltic revolution and to the journalist Neal Ascherson.
The prizes are now run by the Orwell Foundation, a charity at University College London, and the winners are announced each year on or around 25 June, the day Orwell was born in 1903.
For its first twenty-five years the book prize was for non-fiction in practice, though a novel, Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s Moses, Citizen and Me, won it in 2006. In 2019 the Foundation split it in two: the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and a new Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
The fiction prize went first to Anna Burns’s Milkman, set during the Troubles, and since then to novels about a Florida reform school, an Irish convent laundry and Libyan exiles in London.
A British prize for political writing, founded by Bernard Crick and first awarded in 1994. It is run by the Orwell Foundation at University College London and has two book prizes, for political writing and political fiction.
Karen Bartlett, for The Escape from Kabul (political writing), and Ben Lerner, for Transcription (political fiction). The winners were announced on 25 June 2026.
£5,000 for each of the two book prizes.
On or around 25 June, George Orwell’s birthday. The shortlists come out in May.
Yes. Since 2019 there has been a separate Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Before that, one novel won the book prize: Moses, Citizen and Me by Delia Jarrett-Macauley, in 2006.
Publishers based in the UK or Ireland, for books first published there in the twelve months to the end of May. Translations and self-published books are not eligible.
Several. Anna Burns’s Milkman also won the Booker Prize, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys the Pulitzer, and Hisham Matar’s My Friends the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
With the ten most recent, which have a full entry on this page. For more true stories, my page on the Baillie Gifford Prize has every winner of the UK’s non-fiction prize.
Winner list last verified 22 September 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“For this year’s prize, we especially looked for books that honour Orwell’s commitment to lucid language and intellectual honesty. By both of these standards, The Escape from Kabul smashes it out of the park.”
— Rohan Silva, chair of the 2026 Political Writing judges
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