First-hand reporting dominates Baillie Gifford shortlist

Non-fiction prize judges select books by Svetlana Alexievich, Margo Jefferson, Philippe Sands and Hisham Matar

Books by two journalists, one a Pulitzer prizewinner, the other a Nobel laureate, have made it to the shortlist announced on Monday for the £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.

One is a study of life in the Soviet Union just before the system collapsed, by the Belarusian campaigning journalist Svetlana Alexievich, which won her last year’s Nobel prize for literature. The other is a memoir of life growing up in a privileged black district of Chicago by the Pulitzer prizewinning critic Margo Jefferson.

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