It is instructive to learn of the machinations that led to the final decision. Maureen Freely, one of the judging panel, wrote on “The complex problems of judging the Warwick prize” (The Guardian). There is one passage that bears highlighting, and it is presented as one answer to the question “What is complexity?”, and more specifically what does complexity mean in the context of the Warwick Prize?

If we accept that writing makes you think, and that the formation of knowledge depends partly on the complex and often playful process of writing, then what role does the process of writing perform on that very edge of ‘not knowing’ and ‘knowing’: a place of creativity, energy and adventure

Here’s the freedom – from sponsorship, external pressures – that such a brief creates:

If we had been confined to the usual categories, we would have been measuring the books up to some definition of a form. [...] But what a refreshing change it made to read 20 books for their ideas, and to track the ways in which the very act of writing changed them.

All this takes reflexivity and the inter-action in-between writing into another plane; in some sense, it requires that the judging panel and its criteria reside inside, or within, the writing process itself. I wonder how this will be re-defined for the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing, the theme of which will be Colour.

The winner is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. While I have reservations about the book’s general thesis, it is something that successfully motored the continued working of whatever remaining grey cells left in me, an aspect noted by the judging panel:

It has started many debates, and will start many more

Postscript:

See this profile of Klein in The New Yorker.

While we’re on the subject of prizes, money and prize money, spare a thought for Colin Robinson, who was recently despatched from his position as editor at “a large publisher in New York”.

The Warwick Prize for Writing, launched by the University of Warwick

is an international cross-disciplinary award which will be given biennially for an excellent and substantial piece of writing in the English language, in any genre or form, on a theme that will change with every award.

Further,

The new Prize is part of the University’s Vision 2015 plan to enhance the University’s already significant international links and position it as an intellectual gateway to the UK and beyond.

The Prize brilliantly underlines the University of Warwick’s position at the forefront of academic excellence, its thematic approach to cross-disciplinary learning and reputation for creative excellence.

(Read more about the Warwick Prize for Writing here.)

This year’s short-listed books include Lisa Appignanesi’s Mad, Bad and Sad and Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. For both the short-list and long-list, see here.  The winner will be announced next week, on the 24th of February.

Apart from the unique way in which nominations and the long-list are compiled, I must say that the Prize is exactly as described: a prize for writing, never mind the £50,000.

For the aspiring writers out there / in here, the next Prize “will be awarded in 2011 and the theme will be announced at the award ceremony in February 2009″.