Groundbreaking Prize Gives Inaugural Award to Naomi Klein

The £50,000 Warwick prize for writing wants to do things differently. Breaking from traditional book award tradition, the Warwick will be offered biennially to a book of any genre ('interdisciplinary' and 'inter-formal' are the words they use) that most embodies the changing theme that the Warwick University people mean to explore. The idea is to follow the "moving edge" of literature.

For the inaugural award, the theme was complexity. And Naomi Klein's much-discussed book on what she calls disaster capitalism, The Shock Doctrine, has taken the cake.

On this year's shortlist, (chair of the judges China) Miéville added that Klein's book scored outstandingly – in a strong field – for the chord it struck with this year's theme. "We kept coming back to the Klein book not just for its prescience and passion, but because of the 'systematicity' with which it builds a very sophisticated argument into a book that is both accessible and – odd though it sounds of such an angry work – beautiful."

The longlist apparently included fiction, nonfiction and poetry, although only one novel made it into the five-book shortlist.

Besides the cash prize and publicity, Klein has the opportunity to accept a short-term teaching position at Warwick University. The guidelines for the 2011 prize have also been announced--it will go to the best book on the theme of color.