Sue Prideaux won the £5,000 (about $6,465) Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for historical work for Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, which drew praise from the judging panel for making "an extraordinarily bold and provocative case." In addition to the cash award, the winner receives a magnum of Pol Roger champagne and a copy of Cooper's autobiography, Old Men Forget.
Chair of the judges Artemis Cooper said: "In recent years, Paul Gauguin's paintings have been dismissed as a colonialist and exploitative view of exotic people in a lush landscape. Sue Prideaux's Wild Thing brings to light a far more complex picture, of a man who struggled all his life--whether in Paris, Pont-Aven or Tahiti--to evoke his experience of being alive. The way she writes about his art and sets him in the context of his time is dazzling."
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The shortlist has been selected for the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, dedicated to "literature addressing racism and cultural diversity" and sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation. The winner will be announced April 10. See the 10 finalists here.