Victoria Amelina wins the Orwell Prize for Political Writing posthumously
Looking at Women, Looking at War by Victoria Amelina, who was killed in 2023, won the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
The Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2025 has been awarded posthumously to Victoria Amelina for Looking at Women, Looking at War, published by William Collins. The winners were announced on 25 June 2025 at a ceremony in central London.
Amelina was a Ukrainian novelist who turned to documenting life and war crimes in eastern Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion. She died after being injured in a Russian missile strike in June 2023, and the book was published after her death.
The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction went to Donal Ryan for Heart Be at Peace, published by Doubleday, a novel told in twenty-one voices from a rural Irish community. Other prizes went to Jenny Kleeman for journalism, Simon Murphy of The Mirror for reporting on homelessness, and James Hampshire for the Bernard Crick Prize.
Bringing a book to print after its author has died is a delicate editorial task, because the final decisions fall to people who cannot ask her what she intended. Recognition of this kind is a reminder that editing is not only about polish. Sometimes it is about keeping faith with a writer who can no longer be consulted, and with the people whose testimony she gathered.
Source: The Orwell Foundation: winners of the Orwell Prizes 2025.