The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for historical writing: the best-written work on this year's shortlist

Plus the best-written previous winner this century

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—The best-written books of 2024.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

—‘This is the story of how a great and mighty civilisation – Mediterranean Islam – was slowly penetrated and subjugated by the fractious states occupying the lands lying north of the Great Sea. And through that story this book offers a challenging view of European imperialism: it was the Mediterranean and its hinterlands – not sub-Saharan Africa, Asia or the Pacific – which witnessed the most historically and politically significant sphere of imperialism and inter-imperialist rivalry from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries’: the best-written work on the shortlist for this year’s PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for historical writing. The winner will be announced this evening (…