The Dayton Literary Peace Prize revealed its 2024 finalists, with 12 titles in contention for the awards that honor books “that have led readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view.”
Paul Lynch made the fiction shortlist for Prophet Song, winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, while Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai was named a finalist for Dust Child. Also shortlisted for the fiction prize were A History of Burning by Janika Oza, River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer, We Meant Well by Erum Shazia Hasan, and The Postcard, written by Anne Berest and translated by Tina Kover.
Tania Branigan was named a finalist for Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution, which was a finalist for last year’s Kirkus Prize and won the Cundill History Prize. Dina Nayeri made the Dayton shortlist for Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn’t Enough, a finalist for last year’s National Book Critics Circle Award.
The other nonfiction finalists were An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight To Change Policing in America by Edwin Raymond with Jon Sternfeld, Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street by Victor Luckerson, All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis by Dana Sachs, and The Talk by Darrin Bell.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize was founded in 2006. Past winners include Viet Thanh Nguyen for The Sympathizer, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers for The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, and Ta-Nehisi Coates for We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.
The winners of this year’s prize will be announced next month.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
