Shortlisted alongside fellow LLA (on behalf of Anna Stein, CAA) author Douglas Stuart, Ben Lerner has won The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction with Transcription (Granta).
Transcription is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate our memories, and a moving exploration of the relationships that make us who we are.
Fiammetta Rocco, Chair of Judges, said:
“Our shortlist is full of books which explore the world we know and look towards the world we want to see – our winning book needed to encompass both. For a book so slim, Transcription by Ben Lerner does so much. A forensic study of our insatiable appetite for new technology, it explores the unreliable stories we tell ourselves about hunger, love and connection. It is about dying with dignity and growing up in a new world. It’s funny, brainy and timely. Lerner deserves to be a household name”