The winner of the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize for Fiction is Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis (The Bodley Head).
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest is a major work of history and adventure. It tells the story of explorer George Mallory 90 years after the first British attempt to conquer Everest. The result of ten years’ research and writing, the book sheds new light on Mallory’s expeditions to scale Everest, against the backdrop of the impact of the Great War and British Imperialism, and gives a detailed insight in to the explorers’ world.
The other shortlisted titles were:
* Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (Portobello Books)
* The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane (Hamish Hamilton)
* The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker (Allen Lane)
* The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston (HarperPress)
* Strindberg A Life by Sue Prideaux (Yale University Press)
The winner was announced by David Willetts MP, Minister for Universities and Science, at a ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects. David’s fellow judges were writer and biographer Patrick French; Paul Laity, non-fiction books editor, The Guardian; Bronwen Maddox, editor, Prospect magazine; and philosopher, poet, physician and cultural critic Professor Raymond Tallis.
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