The Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, which The Spectator has just relaunched, is awarded for travel writing that gives ‘the most acute and profound observation of a culture alien to the writer’. Here, its 1997 winner John Gimlette, whose most recent book has been shortlisted for the Dolman Prize, tells us what winning the award meant to him.
To find out how you can enter the Shiva Naipaul competition, whose other previous winners include Hilary Mantel and Miranda France, click here. To read John’s winning entry from 1997, click here.
The most important taxi I’ve taken
John Gimlette
I’m utterly delighted that the Shiva Naipaul Prize is back up and running. It’s completely changed my life, and I hope it will do the same for others. Until 1997 (the year I won it), I’d always known I wanted to write but I’d never had the courage to do much about it.
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