Tiya Miles, Marlene L. Daut, and Santilla Chingaipe are on the Cundill History Prize 2025 longlist announced in Montreal, Canada, on Monday, July 28, 2025.
The Cundill History Prize recognizes and rewards the best history writing in English, including translations. Founded by Peter Cundill and administered by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, it encourages informed public debate through the wider dissemination of history writing to new audiences around the world. Entries are accepted regardless of the nationality or place of residence of their authors. Tiya Miles won the award in 2022.
The 2025 jury, chaired by Princeton University’s Dayton-Stockton Professor of History Ada Ferrer alongside leading international historians and writers Sunil Amrith, François Furstenberg, Afua Hirsch, and Francesca Trivellato, announced the longlist of fifteen exceptional titles on Monday.
Chair of the Jury and Cundill History Prize finalist in 2022, Ada Ferrer, said: “As is to be expected from a Cundill History Prize book, the fifteen titles on this year’s longlist combine superb writing with rigorous and imaginative craft to tackle topics and questions of lasting, sometimes urgent significance. They range widely not only in geographic and temporal scope, but also in method: from sweeping narrative history and biography, to close reading of legal texts, photographs, and dance cards, even to a fascinating walk in a postcolonial city as means to understand an unwritten history, centuries old. The result is a list of fifteen singular books that represent the calibre and diversity of history writing today. Huge congratulations to all the historians and authors on our list.”
The list contains the following writers of African descent;
- Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia, Santilla Chingaipe (Scribner Australia, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia)
- The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, Marlene L. Daut (Knopf)
- Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, Tiya Miles (Penguin Press)
Santilla Chingaipe said, “holy moly, you guys! @blackconvicts has been longlisted for the most prestigious history prize in the world: the @cundill.prize! insane 😱 as the book argues, the colonisation of Australia is part of a much broader, international narrative of power, money, culture, and race. How wonderful to see a work of Australian history among such an incredible global longlist. doubly honoured. 🙇🏿♀️”
The shortlist will be announced in September before the winner is revealed later in the year. The winner will receive US$75,000 while two runners-up each receive US$10,000.
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