2017 Medici Book Club Prize
The Medici Book Club Prize
About the Prize | Previous Winners | Medici Founding Patrons








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.




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-Adler | Linleigh Richker |
Helaine Blatt | Linda Rosman |
Laurie Ember | Rina Scott |
Nancy Jacoby | Joanne Solov |
Kim Allen-Niesen | Laura Strauss |


2017 NOMINATED AUTHORS
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, Slammerkin, Life Mask, Landing, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). 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 Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Discontent 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 Times, The 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 Times, Esquire, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, The 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.
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