Naomi Klein is the winner of the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing for her book “The Shock Doctrine.”
The prize, worth 50,000 British pounds (about C$90,000), is run by Britain’s University of Warwick and will be handed out every other year.
The book by the Toronto-based journalist topped a short list of six international titles. This year’s prize theme, complexity, was interpreted differently by each writer, organizers said.
“‘The Shock Doctrine’ is a brilliant, provocative, outstandingly written investigation into some of the great outrages of our time,” said author China Mieville, chair of the judging panel.
The book, published by Knopf Canada, examines the rise of “disaster capitalism” where moments of crisis such as 9-11 are exploited by global corporations.
Colour was announced as the theme of the 2011 Warwick Prize.
The other titles that made the shortlist: “Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800” by Lisa Appignanesi; “The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi?” by Francisco Goldman; “Reinventing the Sacred” by Stuart A. Kauffman; “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century” by Alex Ross; and “Montano’s Malady” by Enrique Vila-Matas (translator Jonathan Dunne).
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