Posted on November 17, 2021 at 8:20 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Congratulations to author Patrick Radden Keefe on winning the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.
The prize is Britain’s top nonfiction award and nets its winner £50,000 (about $67,300).
The title family launched Purdue Pharma, maker of painkillers Vicodin and OxyContin, and has drawn increased scrutiny and criticism in recent years (beyond Keefe’s book) for its role in the opioid crisis.
Keefe previously won the Orwell Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for another investigative work, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which examined the murder of Jean McConville by the IRA in 1972.
You can watch footage of the ceremony, including judges' comments, on the Baillie Gifford website, and also hear from the author himself in a spring appearance on NPR's Fresh Air.
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Categories: Today in Books