Preti Taneja, a British Indian author, received the Gordon Burn Prize in 2022 for her novel Aftermath, which is set in the ‘Aftermath’ of the 2019 London Bridge terror incident in the UK. She has claimed that Aftermath is the toughest book that she ever wrote.
On October 13, the Durham Book Festival announced the winner, Preti Taneja for Aftermath. The Prize, currently in its ninth year, honours the year’s most dazzlingly daring and avant-garde works of English-language fiction and non-fiction.
A panel of judges comprised Indian-origin writer Chitra Ramaswamy from Scotland, journalist and columnist Jonathan Liew, author Denise Mina (chair), broadcaster Stuart Maconie, and poet and artist Heather Phillipson chose Taneja’s book.
Taneja said, “Aftermath is the hardest book I hope I’ll ever write.”
She added, “For some, it’s a controversial book. For others, it’s simply about the obvious harms of the endemic racism of a UK education system that does not teach colonial history properly; the biases in the school-to-prison pipeline and in the criminal justice system; and the corresponding narratives of policing, safety, and educational saviourism we cling to, but which fail to keep anyone safe”.
We That Are Young, Taneja’s debut novel, which is a translation of King Lear by William Shakespeare, is set in a modern-day Indian business family. It was awarded the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2018 and is set in contemporary India. Taneja is a professor of world literature and creative writing at Newcastle University.
With “Aftermath,” she aims to explain the 2019 London Bridge terror assault, which resulted in five stabbings and the deaths of two of the victims.
Usman Khan, a convicted terrorist who served eight years in jail before carrying out two murders—of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt—at a celebration for the anniversary of a prison program in which he had taken part—was present.
Aftermath is defined as a significant effort to re-establish confidence in human compassion after acts of violence: a potent recommitment to action and radical optimism. Taneja had taught Khan in jail and Jack Merritt was her colleague.
Taneja remarked, “As a writer of fiction and nonfiction, Gordon Burn never shied away from the most difficult subjects. He was dedicated to finding the best form for his work, experimenting not only to achieve effect but to explore the ethics of writing about those subjects through the writing itself.”
The Gordon Burn Prize, which was announced last week, includes a GBP 5,000 winner’s check and the chance to spend up to three months on a writing retreat at Gordon Burn’s home in Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders. It was established in honour of the late author of Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West and novels like Fullalove.
The award recognises literature that is courageous in its goal and execution. It aims to honour those who follow in Burn’s footsteps. The recognised works frequently provoke further thought in the reader by experimenting with style or genre, pushing limits, or veering from the norms of mainstream literary culture.
Judge Ramaswamy said, “Aftermath is a beautifully crafted and carefully judged examination of an atrocity and the structures and systems that surround it”.
“I’m blown away by Preti Taneja’s writing: both the moral integrity of her approach and her fractured, minimalist prose. She has written a radical, profound, profoundly fractured and completely unique work of narrative nonfiction that has stayed with me. I haven’t read anything quite like it, and I can’t think of a more deserving winner of the Gordon Burn Prize,” she added.
Arin Keeble, LA Review of Books remarked, “Aftermath is a book of extraordinary heart and intellectual force that probes the power of trauma and interrogates the ideologically inflected meanings of terrorism. Its achievement lies in its generosity and intimacy, and, crucially, in how it shows the way traumatic rupture can occur amid the less visible but equally pernicious forces of systemic violence.”
