A wide range of fictional and non-fictional topics abound in this year’s selection for the annual literary award

The longlist for the 2023 Wingate Literary Prize was revealed this Wednesday, featuring 12 works of fiction and non-fiction. The list was whittled down by an expert judging panel comprising Dr Aviva Dautch, the Chair and JR’s executive director; Guggenheim Fellow and National Jewish Book Award winner George Prochnik; journalist, editor and author Sarah Shaffi; and Julie Cohen, award-winning author and associate lecturer in creative writing at the University of Reading.

Among the books selected are a diverse range of themes, from pogroms in early 20th-century Ukraine to love in a virtual world to compelling memoirs. “After a warmly enjoyable, but also robust, discussion, we arrived at a longlist that showcases the breadth and depth of contemporary Jewish writing,” said Dautch. “Sadly we had to let some very deserving books go, but are confident that the 12 we have chosen merit a wide readership, bringing the nuanced complexities of Jewish experience to a general audience.”

The 2023 Wingate Literary Prize longlist:

• The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland

• The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land by Omer Friedlander

• On Consolation by Michael Ignatieff

• Come to this Court and Cry by Linda Kinstler

• The Women of Rothschild by Natalie Livingstone

• Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

• The Island of Extraordinary Captives by Simon Parkin

• The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid (trans Yardenne Greenspan)

• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (trans Jennifer Croft)

• In the Midst of Civilised Europe by Jeffrey Veidlinger

• The Only Daughter by AB Yehoshua (trans Stuart Schoffman)

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Established in 1977, the annual Wingate Literary Prize – worth £4,000 and run in association with JW3 – is the only UK literary award to recognise authors and writings that translate the idea of Jewishness to Jews and non-Jews alike.

The 2023 shortlist will be announced late January and the award ceremony will take place in March. The writer taking home the prize follows in the footsteps of US author Nicole Krauss, who won this year with her first anthology of short stories, To Be a Man.

By Danielle Goldstein

To find out more about the Wingate Literary Prize, visit wingatefoundation.org.uk.