Orwell Prize 2009

The winners of the Orwell Prize 2009 were announced at the Awards Ceremony at the Foreign Press Association, London, on Wednesday 22nd April.

Journalist and author, Andrew Brown, won the Book Prize for Fishing in Utopia, published by Granta.

The judges said: “The book tells, in a style which is both charming and crystalline, the story of how the author fell in love with Sweden and everything Swedish, including his first wife, the fishing and the socialism, more particularly the spirit of equality which seemed to pervade the whole country. And when he falls out of love, it is not a straightforward disillusionment but rather a rueful recognition of how incredibly hard it was and is for a country of dirt-poor farmers to emerge into an industrial nation without losing some of the idealism in the affluence. The descriptions of fishing are as enchanting as anything since Izaak Walton, but in its light and easy way the book is as profound as it is enchanting.”

Read the reviews Fishing in Utopia received when it first came out