PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE FOR HISTORY 2020

Dec. 5, 2020

British Indian journalist and author Anita Anand's book that tells the story of a young man caught up in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar has won a prestigious history-literary prize in the UK.

About:

  • 'The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj' beat six other titles for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2020, awarded annually for a non-fiction book of specifically historical content.

  • English PEN, which stands for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists, is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations championing the freedom to write and read.

  • It is the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries.

  • Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the 1960s and 1970s and on her death in 1999, she bequeathed 100,000 pounds to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name.

  • Entries are required to be works of high literary merit - that is, not primarily written for the academic market - and can cover all historical periods.