The £3,000 prize for political writing went to the Moscow-based journalist Joshua Yaffa’s Between Two Fires, a collection of portraits of individuals – from TV producers to priests – in contemporary Russia. ‘Orwell was a constant reference’ … Joshua Yaffa. “That’s why the past and future visions of his fiction will always be timeless, and why the Orwell prize for political fiction really matters.” To me, that’s what the word Orwellian means,” said Smith, who was previously shortlisted and longlisted for the prize with her novels Winter and Spring respectively. “The place where these two things meet can’t not be a place of humane – and inhumane – revelation. Smith, accepting her prize in a speech next to the mural of Orwell at Southwold Pier in Suffolk, said she was “so happy” to win, citing Orwell’s ambitions for political writing and art. “Capturing a snapshot of life in Britain right up until the present day, Smith takes the emotional temperature of a nation grappling with a global pandemic, the brink of Brexit, heartbreaking conditions for refugees, and so much more,” the judges said.
The judges, headed by former Orwell prize winner Delia Jarrett-Macauley, said that Summer seals Smith’s reputation “as the great chronicler of our age”. Smith’s Summer beat titles including Colum McCann’s Apeirogon and Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji to the £3,000 prize, which goes to the work of fiction that comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition “to make political writing into an art”.
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