Judges praise Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation of the Sackler family and its role in the opioid crisis for its rigour, bravery and narrative energy
Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation into the Sacklers, the dynasty whose company Purdue Pharma sold the OxyContin painkiller which is said to have fuelled the US’s opioid crisis, has won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.
Keefe, who has said he was subject to surveillance and threats of legal action while writing Empire of Pain, beat titles including Harald Jähner’s look at life in Germany after the second world war, Aftermath, and poet and novelist Kei Miller’s essay collection Things I Have Withheld, to win the prize. The Baillie Gifford is the UK’s top award for non-fiction, won in the past by writers such as Antony Beevor and Barbara Demick.
