The shortlist for the American Library in Paris Award has been revealed, Literary Hub reports, with five books in the running for the literary prize that honors English-language titles about French people and culture.
Claire Messud made the shortlist for This Strange Eventful History, her novel about a French Algerian family uprooted by World War II and the Algerian War. The book has been longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Giller Prize.
Adam Shatz was named a finalist for The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, his biography of the French Afro-Caribbean Marxist philosopher that was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Robert Darnton made the shortlist for The Revolutionary Temper: Paris 1748–1789, his account of the years before the French Revolution, while Justine Firnhaber-Baker was named a finalist for House of Lilies: The Dynasty That Made Medieval France, her book about the Capetian dynasty of medieval France.
Jackie Wullschläger was shortlisted for Monet: The Restless Vision, her biography of the painter and founder of Impressionism.
The American Library in Paris Book Award was established in 2013. Previous winners have included Fredrik Logevall for Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam and Sudhir Hazareesingh for Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture.
The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on Nov. 7.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
