Cundill History Prize announces eight-title shortlist

The Cundill History Prize has named eight books to its 2026 shortlist, narrowing a field of nearly 400 international submissions for the US$75,000 award. The shortlist was published by the prize on September 2 and reported on September 3 by trade outlets including The Bookseller and Books+Publishing. Chair of judges Emily Greenwood said the selected works uncover histories that had been “forgotten, silenced or simply not intuited.” The annual prize is administered through McGill University in Montreal and is awarded for a work of history written or translated into English. ### Which books made the shortlist? Books+Publishing listed the eight shortlisted titles as *The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence* by Louise Brangan; *Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult* by Jonathan Cheng; *Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia* by Sam Dalrymple; *Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History* by Linford D. Fisher; *Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean* by Eric T. (cundillprize.com) Jennings; *The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews* by Alexander Lee; *We the People: A History of the US Constitution* by Jill Lepore; and *John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law* by Beth Lew-Williams. Kirkus Reviews separately confirmed several of the same shortlisted authors, including Lepore, Dalrymple and Lew-Williams, in its report on the announcement. ### What did the judges say about this year’s selection? Emily Greenwood, who chairs the 2026 jury, said the shortlist features books that uncover “histories that have been forgotten, silenced or simply not intuited because we lacked the evidence and interpretative frameworks to grasp unobvious connections and to question settled accounts,” according to The Bookseller. (booksandpublishing.com.au) (kirkusreviews.com) The Cundill Prize homepage uses similar language, saying the eight books “uncover histories that have been forgotten, silenced, or simply not intuited.” The prize’s September archive page described the shortlist in terms of “neglected voices, power structures and nation-making.” ### How large was the field? The Cundill Prize said last month that its 2026 longlist of 15 books had been chosen from “almost 400 submissions from across the world.” Books+Publishing said the final eight-book shortlist was selected from 400 international submissions. (thebookseller.com) The prize is one of the better-known international awards for history writing in English. Books+Publishing said the award goes to a single author each year, while two runners-up have in previous years received US$10,000 each. (cundillprize.com) ### Who is overseeing the 2026 jury? The Cundill Prize site identifies Greenwood as the 2026 jury chair and describes her as the James F. (cundillprize.com) Rothenberg Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. A jury page on the prize website also says Greenwood is serving in spring 2026 as the Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The prize’s official materials frame the award as recognizing a history book with scholarly originality, literary quality and broad appeal. (booksandpublishing.com.au) Kirkus used that language in describing the shortlist announcement. ### What happens next in the prize process? The Cundill Prize website has published the 2026 shortlist but does not, on the pages reviewed, give a winner date alongside the announcement. (cundillprize.com) The site’s winners section includes a 2026 page, indicating the next step is selection of that year’s winner from the eight shortlisted books. Books+Publishing’s 2025 coverage said the previous year’s winner was announced on October 30, but the 2026 schedule was not specified in the sources reviewed for this story. (kirkusreviews.com) For now, the next public milestone is the prize’s final decision from the shortlist released this week. (booksandpublishing.com.au) (cundillprize.com)