The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2021, introduced by Delia Jarrett-Macauley

The judges for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction are: Delia Jarrett-Macauley (chair), former winner of The Orwell Prize for Moses, Citizen and Me; Andrea Stuart, author; Bea Carvalho, head fiction buyer at Waterstones; and Mark Ford, professor at University College London and author. They said:
The conclusion to Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet seals her reputation as the great chronicler of our age. Capturing a snapshot of life in Britain right up until the present day, Smith takes the emotional temperature of a nation grappling with a global pandemic, the brink of Brexit, heart-breaking conditions for refugees, and so much more. It will serve as a time-capsule which will prove to be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the mood of Britain during this turbulent time.”
Ali Smith, speaking next to the mural of Orwell at Southwold Pier in Suffolk, said the following about the news:
"I am so happy to be awarded the Orwell Prize for political fiction.
Orwell’s fiction understands the acute difference between the politics of art and the artfulness of politics. His fiction demonstrates that the power of language is mighty, and that this might is life-changing, world-changing and world-forming; and that language wielded for political power alone will reduce us all to a kind of fodder for powers that be or powers that want-to-be, while the core power of art and of the arts is always expansive, dimensionalising, liberating, complex, and concerned with revealing the human condition and revitalising and re-empowering the human dimension.
“What I have most wanted to do” he said, … “was to make political writing into an art.” The place where these two things meet can’t not be a place of humane - and inhumane - revelation. To me, that’s what the word Orwellian means. This, and that the structures of our arts, the shapes they take, will always make visible the structures by which we’re living, and who controls the language of the narratives we’re communally telling ourselves, and the workings of the narratives by which we’re being delineated as individuals and as a people.
That’s why the past and future visions of his fiction will always be timeless, and why the Orwell Prize for political fiction really matters. Big thank you."