Rajiv Chandrasekaran, an assistant managing editor for the Washington Post, has won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, reports the BBC, pocketing a cool 30,000 pounds in the process. IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY chronicles the chaos and cronyism that characterised the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority’s government of Iraq.
Baroness Helena Kennedy, the Chair of the judges, made the announcement at an awards ceremony held at London’s Savoy Hotel. She commented: “IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY is up there with the greatest reportage of the last 50 years – as fine as Hershey on Hiroshima and Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD. The writing is cool, exact and never overstated and in many places very humorous as the jaw-dropping idiocy of the American action is revealed. Chandrasekaran stands back, detached and collected, from his subject but his reader is left gobsmacked, right in the middle of it.”