www.theguardian.com /books/2021/nov/16/baillie-gifford-prize-empire-of-pain-patrick-radden-keefe

Baillie Gifford prize goes to ‘controlled fury’ of Empire of Pain

Alison Flood 5-6 minutes 11/16/2021

Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation into the Sacklers, the dynasty whose company Purdue Pharma sold the OxyContin painkiller which is said to have fuelled the US’s opioid crisis, has won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.

Keefe, who has said he was subject to surveillance and threats of legal action while writing Empire of Pain, beat titles including Harald Jähner’s look at life in Germany after the second world war, Aftermath, and poet and novelist Kei Miller’s essay collection Things I Have Withheld, to win the prize. The Baillie Gifford is the UK’s top award for non-fiction, won in the past by writers such as Antony Beevor and Barbara Demick.

“We were completely bowled over as a group of judges by Empire of Pain. By its moral rigour, its controlled fury, its exhaustive research, the skilful writing, the bravery it took to write it. Above all, though, by its sheer propulsive narrative energy,” said chair of judges Andrew Holgate.

The book delves into the history of the Sackler family, looking at how a dynasty formerly known for its large philanthropic donations to arts institutions drew much of its wealth from the company making and marketing OxyContin, a highly addictive prescription painkiller.

Keefe, a staff writer at the New Yorker who previously won the Orwell prize for Say Nothing, his investigation into the murder of Jean McConville by the IRA in 1972, accessed thousands of private documents while writing Empire of Pain, conducting more than 200 interviews to tell his story.

“As I was doing my reporting, there were moments where my eyes would bug out of my head. I was shocked. I kept thinking I couldn’t be more shocked. Then I would be,” he told the Observer earlier this year.

Winning this prize is “an enormous honour” he said on Tuesday, adding that “non-fiction is more important than ever” right now because “the very notion of fact has come under assault”.

Keefe has previously told NPR that the Sacklers had “really thrown a lot of energy into trying to thwart this project from its very inception”, sending legal letters and threatening legal action. “I had a moment last summer where my house was being staked out by a private investigator. You know, I can’t say for sure that the Sacklers sent him. But I can tell you I wasn’t working on any other projects at the time and that when I asked them, actually, in a request for comment whether they were responsible for this, they declined to comment,” he said.

Holgate said that the story Keefe had mined in Empire of Pain was exceptionally important, also praising “the skill with which he has told his jaw-dropping tale, and how immersive and unputdownable he has made the telling”.

“This is journalism as outstanding literature, and what we have here is a future classic,” said Holgate, the literary editor of the Sunday Times, who was joined on the judging panel by the novelist Sara Collins, the physicist and writer Dr Helen Czerski, historians Kathryn Hughes and Dominic Sandbrook, and the author and broadcaster Johny Pitts.

Last year’s award was won by Craig Brown for his biography of the Beatles, One, Two, Three, Four.

We've hit our $1.25m goal!

but you can still support us

With help from our readers, we beat our year-end fundraising goal! We raised more than $1.25m to fund our reporting in 2022. It will be a year with many challenges – among them an erosion of democratic norms, an escalating climate emergency and corrosive racial inequality. It’s not too late to give – your support will help us cover these and the many other pressing issues facing America in this new year.

For 10 years, the Guardian US has brought an international lens with a focus on justice to its coverage of America. Globally, more than 1.5 million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support the Guardian financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent. We couldn’t do this without readers like you.

With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favour. It is reader support that makes our high-impact journalism possible and gives us the emotional support and motor energy to keep doing journalism that matters.

Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality.

We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you, and happy new year.

Accepted payment methods: Visa, Mastercard, American Express and PayPal