I am so thrilled for my good friend Elizabeth’s nomination for the Charles Taylor prize. She is a brilliant person and deserves this honour for all her hard work and dedication. Sugar: A Bittersweet History, has been short-listed for THE CHARLES TAYLOR PRIZE for Literary Non-Fiction. The prize will be awarded to the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception. The prize consists of $25,000 and $2,000 for each of the runners up.
Jury Citation: This panoramic narrative vividly evokes the pleasure and the extraordinary suffering wrought by the desire for sugar from the Middle Ages to the present. The author, whose great-great-grandfather was a bit-player in the colonial sugar industry, shows how Europe’s addiction to sweetness contributed to the formation of global empires, the enslavement of entire peoples, the creation of diasporas, and the destruction of the environment. The result is a consummate work of synthesis that powerfully reveals how past inequities continue to resonate in the present.
For more information: The Charles Taylor Prize
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