Nonfiction Books

The Best Politics Books of 2025: The Orwell Prize for Political Writing

From conspiracy theories wreaking havoc in US politics to poignant memoirs of painful events around the globe, the books shortlisted for the 2025 Orwell Prizes, the UK's most prestigious awards for writing about politics, have been announced. These are the eight books shortlisted for the 'Orwell Prize for Political Writing,' awarded annually to a nonfiction book. The comments are from the judging panel, chaired by UK diplomat and former ambassador to the US Kim Darroch.

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At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China

by Edward Wong

Growing up, Edward Wong didn’t hear his father talk much about the older man’s life in China. Perhaps that’s why Wong found himself retracing the elder Wong’s footsteps through the borderlands of the Chinese empire, in his work as the New York Times’s Beijing correspondent. Hong Kong, Harbin, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia: the lives of the two men weave together to form the thread connecting this grand yet personal account of 70 years of Chinese history.

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Broken Threads: My Family from Empire to Independence

by Mishal Husain

The title implies this is a family memoir against a dramatic historical backdrop. It is – and much more. Mishal Husain’s painstaking research allows us to share a view onto the tumult in the Indian sub-continent, before, during and after the end of British colonial rule. The threads of her family’s histories weave with those of Partition. They are as relevant and current as ever and show us what the enduring conflict arising from those times means to human life. It’s painful as well as painstaking. It’s beautiful.

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Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary

by Victoria Amelina

This is a memoir about a war not yet ended, which could have undermined its power. Yet from the opening chapter to the close, the power of the image of women looking at war is relentless and necessary. Amelina is setting off for a holiday with her young son as the war comes chasing after her and everyone else in Ukraine. She is finishing a funding application for a literary festival whilst standing in the security queue at the airport, checking her phone for news and “thinking about my new gun and why I, a nearsighted bookworm, decided to buy it”. Thus a beautifully written book, technically unfinished but with a tragic completeness, unfolds.

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The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin

by Lucy Ash

Vladimir Putin was mocked for being a bore when he lectured Fox News’s Tucker Carlson about Russian history from the 9th century onwards. But this book proves that the past holds many valuable lessons for the Russia of today, in particular the power of the Orthodox Church for would-be rulers of Russia. Ash deftly recounts a concise and never-boring timeline of the collaboration and competition between the Church and the state throughout the centuries, building up a powerful thesis: under Putin’s Russia, the Church has once again become an arm of the state.

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The Coming Storm: A Journey into the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine

by Gabriel Gatehouse

Gabriel Gatehouse has taken us on a deep dive in the dark and toxic waters of the American conspiracy theory epidemic. Why are the Clintons the target of so much craziness? What lies behind QAnon? Who planned the 6 January assault on the Capitol? It’s all here in this riveting page-turner, alongside a cast of characters ranging from the eccentric through the exotic to the downright sinister. The conclusion? You couldn’t make it up. But it’s real, it is doing profound damage to the fabric of America, and sometime soon, the virus will reach our shores.

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The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege

by Simon Parkin

War throws into sharp relief what’s important to us. It forces us to decide what we save and what we sacrifice. Simon Parkin takes us to the darkest days of the Nazi siege of Leningrad, where a group of botanists faced a terrible dilemma. Having amassed the world’s greatest seed bank in the hope of ending famine for all humans one day, they now guarded their vast stash of nutritious specimens at the heart of a city that was starving to death. Artfully told, this is a beautiful and harrowing tale of science, politics and principle in times of war.

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Interview by The judges of the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing

May 27, 2025

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The judges of the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing

The judging panel of the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing was chaired by Kim Darroch, a retired UK civil servant and life peer in the House of Lords. He was joined on the panel by journalist Cindy Yu, sociologist and political scientist Colin Crouch, German-British historian Katja Hoyer, and politician Thangam Debbonaire.

Nonfiction Books Politics & Society The Orwell Prizes

The judges of the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing

The Best Politics Books of 2025: The Orwell Prize for Political Writing

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