The longlist for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction has been revealed, with 12 books in contention for the U.K. literary award.
Yiyun Li was nominated for Things in Nature Merely Grow, her memoir about the suicides of her two teenage sons. She is one of two American authors to make the longlist, alongside Barbara Demick for Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins.
Jason Burke was longlisted for The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s, as were Lyse Doucet for The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan; Helen Garner for How To End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998; Richard Holmes for The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief; and Adam LeBor for The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe’s Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II.
Ian Leslie made the longlist for John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, alongside Justin Marozzi for Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World; Tom McTague for Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016; Adam Weymouth for Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness; and Frances Wilson for Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel.
The Baillie Gifford Prize was established in 1999. Previous winners include Helen Macdonald for H Is for Hawk and John Vaillant for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.
The shortlist for this year’s award will be revealed on October 2, with the winner announced on November 4.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
