DHAKA: Gary Bass, author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide, captured this year’s $75,000 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill.
Chancellor Michael A. Meighen and Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi announced the winner Thursday night at a gala awards dinner in Toronto.
Now in its seventh year, the Cundill Prize is the world’s most lucrative international award for a nonfiction book.
Published by Knopf, The Blood Telegram tells a horrifying story of the Pakistani state’s genocidal war on the people of Bangladesh, and the United States’ sad record of complicity, reports mcgill.ca on Saturday.
The book provides the first full account of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s secret support of Pakistan in 1971 as it committed shocking atrocities in Bangladesh.
“I was doing research for an earlier book in Bosnia after the war there, and randomly brought along a book and read something about this slaughter in Bangladesh, which embarrassingly I knew nothing about,” Bass said in an earlier Reporter article. “That stuck in my mind, and much later I had the time to do some digging to remedy my ignorance. Kissinger’s version of what happened in his memoirs was obviously incomplete, so I did some more digging, and realized that this was going to require much more sustained work in archives and the Nixon tapes. As it unfolded, it was stunning how much more there was to the real story.
“It would be good for people to remember this important chapter of the Cold War,” said Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. “Every reader will judge Nixon’s and Kissinger’s actions in their own way, and it’s not up to me to dictate what they should take away from it, but at least they should be aware of the core facts, and then we can have that debate properly.”
The other two finalists, Richard Overy for The Bombing War: Europe 1939-45 (Allen Lane), and David Van Reybrouck for Congo: The Epic History of a People (ECCO), were each awarded a “Recognition of Excellence” prize of US$10,000. The finalists were selected from 165 submissions received from 70 publishers worldwide.
“I’d like to thank the Cundill Prize jury, who have done a remarkable job in reading through this year’s submissions, which were some of the strongest we have seen to date, to bring us three outstanding finalists” said Prof. Manfredi, who serves as Administrative Chair of the Cundill Prize. “I also congratulate our finalists, who have dedicated years of hard work to the research and writing of the books we celebrate tonight. These three books not only reveal the past, but also show that history shapes who we are, as individuals and as societies.”
BDST: 1257 HRS, NOV 23, 2014
