Every year, The Orwell Foundation awards prizes to the writing and reporting which best meets the spirit of George Orwell’s own ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’.
The winners of the 2025 Orwell Prizes will be revealed on the 25 June 2025.
From The Orwell Foundation:
“We aim to connect with audiences from schoolchildren to policy-makers, offering a platform to discuss subjects close to Orwell’s heart, including poverty, political extremism, and the dangers posed by the corruption of language and the rise of new technologies. Orwell’s work powerfully transcends his own era, remaining relevant to the social, geo-political and economic landscapes of the twenty-first century. Orwell exposed the dangers of disinformation and totalitarianism through writing that glowed with integrity, decency and fidelity to truth. We celebrate these values with our prizes, school programmes, event and online resources, championing creativity and diversity of opinion to promote Orwell’s desire to ‘make political writing into an art’.” https://www.orwellfoundation.com/
| The Orwell Prizes for Political Fiction and Non-Fiction 2025 | ||
| Shortlist: The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction | ||
| Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Dream Count | In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on four women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. |
| Donal Ryan | Heart, Be at Peace | In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding. |
| Edward St Aubyn | Parallel Lines | Parallel Lines is a novel about connection, family, love, and the c cascading consequences of our choices. |
| Robert Harris | Precipice | In 1914, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents - and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history. |
| Jo McMillan | The Accidental Immigrants | The Accidental Immigrants is political fiction based on the facts of the years since Brexit: the fallout from the referendum, the rise of the far-right, and the increasing xenophobia towards people on the move. Set on an island that's a mirror image of Britain, it's both allegory and warning, and a poignant, prescient tale for our times about the dangers facing us all. |
| Noah Eaton | The Harrow | A darkly comic novel of subterfuge, whisky glasses, and the drive of an underdog to find the truth, no matter the consequences. |
| Elif Shafak | There are Rivers in the Sky | A rich, sweeping novel set between the 19th century and modern times, about love and loss, memory and erasure, hurt and healing, centred around three enchanting characters living on the banks of the River Thames and the River Tigris- their lives all curiously touched by the epic of Gilgamesh. |
| Natasha Brown | Universality | On an abandoned Yorkshire farm, a group of hippie-anarchsits have taken up residence to build a new society. When their leader is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar, an ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth behind the attack. The messy aftermath of the expose is unraveled through the perspective of each of the mystery's key players. |
| Shortlist: The Orwell Prize for Political Non-Fiction | ||
| Edward Wong | At the Edge of Empire | As witness to civil rights struggles in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, Edward Wong reached a deeper understanding of his family and his homeland. This chronicle of nearly a century of momentous change reveals China as it is catapulted into the superpower age. |
| Anne Applebaum | Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators who want to run the World | Celebrated historian and journalist Anne Applebaum uncovers the autocratic networks working together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organise to defeat them. |
| Mishal Husain | Broken Threads: A Family from Empire to Independence | The lives of Mishal Husain's grandparents changed forever in 1947, as the new nation states of India and Pakistan were born. For years she had a partial story, a patchwork of memories and anecdotes: hurried departures, lucky escapes from violence, and homes never seen again. As freedom comes, bonds fray and communities are divided, leaving two couples to forge new identities, while never forgetting the shared heritage of the past. |
| Victoria Amelina | Looking at Women Looking at War | When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country's literary scene, and parenting her son. Then she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. |
| Lucy Ash | The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Churches from Pagans to Putin | Combining historical research and vivid present-day reportage, The Baton and the Cross explores the impact the Church is having on millions of lives. Delving into the underbelly of politics , state security and big money, Ash shows how these forces have formed an unholy alliance with Orthodoxy in the dystopia of twenty-first century Russia. |
| Gabriel Gatehouse | The Coming Storm: A Journey into the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine | A compelling mix of reportage and personal experience, The Coming Storm is a riveting deep-dive into the roots of Q Anon, the rise of the extreme right in the US, and the rabbit warren of American conspiracy culture. |
| Simon Parkin | The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege | Drawing on previously unseen sources, The Forbidden Garden tells the remarkable and moving story of the botanists who remained at the Plant Institute during the Siege of Leningrad, risking their lives in the name of science. |
| Vladislav Zubok | The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 | In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond. |
