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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsIndian writer Pankaj Mishra won the 2024 Hilary Weston International Award, which recognizes career achievement in nonfiction. The award’s jury praised the range of his work and its arguments about empire, identity, nationalism and belonging.
What the Hilary Weston International Award recognizes
Administered by Writers’ Trust of Canada, the award honours career achievement in nonfiction writing on the global stage. It recognizes a body of work judged excellent and consequential to understanding the world—not a single book published in the award year. Eligible writers must have published at least three nonfiction books of outstanding literary merit, in English or widely available in translation. Writers’ Trust of Canada: award purpose and criteria
The award’s published terms state that the winner receives $75,000 and appears at an event in Toronto in the award year. That is the award’s stated prize, not confirmation of a particular payment. The international award is distinct from the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, a Canadian prize for a single work. Award information and process
How the winner is selected
A three-person international advisory committee creates the longlist. A five-person Canadian jury then reads a book by each longlisted author and chooses the winner. The award says only the winner’s name will be made public. Writers’ Trust of Canada: selection process
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Why the jury chose Pankaj Mishra
The 2024 Canadian jury described Mishra as a writer whose nonfiction brings memoir, philosophy, history, sociology and criticism together. It highlighted his examination of global histories of fascism, liberalism’s complicity with empire, and the weakening of international legal and moral covenants, as well as his writing about identity, nationalism and belonging.
“The best nonfiction is both a window and a mirror. It exposes, reflects, and filters light. Pankaj Mishra is a writer for and of this difficult and complex world we are creating.”
The jury’s statement is an account of its own reasoning, not a universal verdict on Mishra’s work. The official announcement calls him an essayist, memoirist and public intellectual whose writing addresses the Global South, Western imperialism in Asia and contemporary spirituality. 2024 Hilary Weston International Award winner announcement
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Books that show the range of his nonfiction
The award announcement identifies several works that help illustrate the breadth the jury recognized:
Rank #3
- Age of Anger: A History of the Present (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), described by the award page as Mishra’s best-selling nonfiction work. The page gives no sales figure. It is a useful place to begin with the themes of his public writing.
- From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia (Anchor Canada, 2014), for which Mishra received the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding in 2014.
- Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), a collection of essays addressing colonialism, human rights and weakening Anglo-American hegemony.
- An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (Picador, 2004), another nonfiction work included in the award page’s account of his bibliography.
Mishra’s official biography and Penguin Random House’s author page also record his 2024 award and nonfiction bibliography. Pankaj Mishra’s official biography · Penguin Random House author page
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