'Most Orwellian winner yet': The Invention of Russia takes Orwell prize

Arkady Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia, an account of media manipulation and of language in modern Russia, wins UK’s top award for political writing

An account of modern Russia, which in its investigation into media manipulation is “absolutely in [George] Orwell’s own tradition” has won the UK’s most prestigious prize for political writing, the Orwell prize for books.

Chair of judges for the prize Lord William Waldegrave compared Arkady Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia to George Orwell’s novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, saying that Ostrovsky’s non-fiction title was “absolutely about the central themes that Orwell is most famous of all for … the importance of language, and how he or she who controls the language, controls the narrative. And although there are many strong and brave liberal voices in Russia, if you get control of social and traditional media, you’ve gone a long way to controlling the message.”

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