Professor Amy Stanley’s book “Stranger in the Shogun’s City” wins National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award

History Professor Amy Stanley’s, new book, Stranger in the Shogun’s City (Scribner, 2020) won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Stanely is also the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize in biography.

Stanley’s book has been named a best book of the year by the Economist, New Statesman, Times of London, and Washington Post. Her book was also shortlisted for the Baillie-Gifford prize, the UK’s most prestigious prize for non-fiction.

“It’s the story of a rebellious, discontented woman who sacrificed everything to be there,” according to Stanley’s website. “The book follows her from her childhood in Japan’s snow country through three catastrophic marriages and a devastating famine to her escape to the shogun’s capital. It’s about how a woman used the city to recreate herself — as a maidservant, a tenement-dweller, a samurai’s wife — and how she, and others like her, built the global megalopolis we know today.”

Stanley describes her book below on the 2020 Baillie-Gifford Prize winner watch party:

“Biographies are usually about famous, or at least extremely accomplished, people. Tsuneno was just an average woman, but I think her struggle to determine the shape of her own life resonates even now, as women of my generation continue to face similar obstacles related to the expectation that they will subordinate their own desires in order to be good wives and mothers,” said Stanely.

Since 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards have honored many of the most outstanding voices in literature across diverse genres, including fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, and drama. The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography is awarded for excellence in the art of biography.

The National Book Critics Circle honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. Each year, the National Book Critics Circle presents one award for the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.

Related:
Historian Amy Stanley wins National Book Critics Circle Award – Northwestern Now