BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE (Syllabus: GS Paper 2 – IR)

Context: Nandini Das, the India-born author, recently achieved a significant milestone by winning the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for her book 'Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire,' which comes with a substantial award of 25,000 British pound.

Her work: She has sought to present a new perspective on the origins of empire through the story of the arrival of the first English ambassador in India, Sir Thomas Roe, in the early 17th century.

British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

• About: This is awarded annually for a non-fiction book that has made an outstanding contribution to global cultural understanding for a wider public audience. 

oThe British Academy is the UK’s national academy for humanities and social sciences, and eligible books come from the subjects that fall within those disciplines, from archaeology, history and psychology to philosophy, languages and cultural studies.

• Eligibility Criteria

oThe Prize rewards books that best contribute to improving global cultural understanding among public audiences. The judges are seeking books that demonstrate rigorous original and high-quality research, and that are accessible and engaging to read.

oAuthors can be of any nationality, based anywhere in the world and working in any language.

oTranslated books are eligible provided that they are first published in English in the UK between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.

oBooks that have previously been published outside the UK and Ireland in the English language.