Naomi Klein, V V Ganeshananthan win Women’s Prize literary awards

Naomi Klein and V V Ganeshananthan. Pics/X

Author-activist Naomi Klein won the inaugural Women's Prize for Nonfiction on Thursday with "Doppelganger", a personal account of her plunge into the world of online misinformation.

Its sister award, the Women's Prize for Fiction, went to US writer V V Ganeshananthan for her novel "Brotherless Night", about a family torn apart by Sri Lanka's long civil war. Both come with 30,000 pounds (R32 lakh) in prize money.

Klein, author of "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine", delves into her experience being mistaken for Naomi Wolf, author of "The Beauty Myth" and more recently a promulgator of anti-vaxx ideas and other conspiracy theories. Part memoir and part reportage, "Doppelganger" - subtitled "A Trip into the Mirror World" - investigates how online life has distorted reality, and asks what might be done about it.

Historian Suzannah Lipscomb, who headed a panel of judges for the nonfiction award, called Klein's book "a courageous, humane and optimistic call-to-arms that moves us beyond black and white, beyond Right and Left."

Ganeshananthan's victorious second novel, which traces an aspiring medic's journey through the brutality and moral uncertainties of war, took almost two decades to complete. Novelist Monica Ali, who chaired the fiction judging panel, said "Brotherless Night" is "a brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel."

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