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2017 Medici Book Club Prize

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The mission of the Medici Book Club Prize is to recognize a distinguished work of fiction that has inspired thoughtful conversation and contributed to a deeper understanding of the human experience. The $5,000 award is the first annual national prize given to acknowledge the tremendous impact that book club selections have on readers. The Medici Book Club Prize is awarded each year at the Beverly Hills Literary Escape.

The Medici Book Club Prize nominees are selected by an advisory council which includes nationally celebrated book group coordinator and founder of the Beverly Hills Literary Escape, Julie Robinson; three judges annually who have written and published respected works of literature; and the Medici Founding Patrons.

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2016

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2012

2010

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The Medici Book Club Prize is generously funded by the individual contributions of our Medici Founding Patrons. We graciously acknowledge their support of literature and of individual writers as artists.

Alexis Deutsch-AdlerLinleigh Richker
Helaine BlattLinda Rosman
Laurie EmberRina Scott
Nancy JacobyJoanne Solov
Kim Allen-NiesenLaura Strauss

2017 NOMINATED AUTHORS

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Emma Donoghue, The Wonder

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She also migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (Frog Music, SlammerkinLife MaskLandingThe Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-FryHoodLanding). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes.

Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

Mohsin Hamid is the internationally bestselling author of Moth SmokeThe Reluctant FundamentalistHow to Get Filthy Rich in Rising AsiaDiscontent and its Civilizations, and Exit West. His award-winning novels have been adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and translated into more than thirty languages. His essays and short stories have appeared in The New York TimesThe Washington Post, and The New Yorker, among many other publications. Hamid now resides in Lahore, his birthplace, after living for a number of years in New York and London.

Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone

Adam Haslett is the author of three works of fiction: the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, which was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist; the novel Union Atlantic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize; and his most recent, the novel Imagine Me Gone. His books have been translated into eighteen languages, and his journalism and fiction have appeared in The Financial TimesEsquireNew York MagazineThe New YorkerThe GuardianDer SpiegelThe NationThe Atlantic Monthly, and Best American Short Stories. He has been awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Winship Awards. In 2016, he received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. A graduate of Swarthmore College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Yale Law School, he has been a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Born and raised in the Boston area, Amor Towles graduated from Yale College and received an MA in English from Stanford University. Having worked as an investment professional in Manhattan for over twenty years, he now devotes himself fulltime to writing. His first novel, Rules of Civility, published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback and was ranked by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011. The book was optioned by Lionsgate to be made into a feature film and its French translation received the 2012 Prix Fitzgerald. His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, published in 2016, was also a New York Times bestseller and was ranked as one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the St. Louis Dispatch, and NPR. Both novels have been translated into over fifteen languages. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.

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