The Orwell Prizes 2022 Winners

It is our pleasure to confirm My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan as the winners of the 2022 Orwell Prizes.

Named in honour of the pioneering political journalist and prophetic novelist George Orwell, the Orwell Prizes are Britain’s premier award for political writing in both non-fiction and fiction.

The Orwell Prize for Political Writing Winner

Profoundly shocking, urgent and essential, Hayden's riveting volume about the twenty-first-century migrant crisis places testimony from a wide range of refugees front and centre, revealing an appalling level of abuse, deceit and cruelty - all tacitly sanctioned by European policy. Tracing corruption within the United Nations and the chilling reality of the modern-day slave trade, as well as the frustrations of aid workers and the despair of the migrants themselves, My Fourth Time, We Drowned is an immensely important and compelling read.

The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Winner

Set in a small Irish town in the run-up to Christmas 1985, Keegan’s exquisitely written novella paints an unforgettable picture of quiet courage and heroism as a coal and timber merchant prepares to confront the sins of the Catholic Church that have cruelly blighted the area’s past. Nuanced, moving and highly powerful, Small Things Like These is an intimate work which expertly illuminates universal themes.