Australian writer Richard Flanagan has won Britain’s leading nonfiction book prize, a decade after being awarded the Booker Prize for fiction.

Richard Flanagan, who won the Booker Prize for fiction in 2014, has become the first author in history to achieve the “unprecedented double” after being named the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.

Richard Flanagan has become the first author in history to win both the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.

The prize recognizes the best novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland, and comes with a cash prize of 50,000 pounds, or $64,000 Orbital by Samantha Harvey has received the 2024 Booker Prize.

Samantha Harvey has become the first woman since 2019 to win the Booker Prize with Orbital, in a record year for female writers. According to the Booker Prize, 36 men and 19 women have won it since its inception.

British author Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize award with her latest novel Orbital. The novel was announced as the winner at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate Market in London on Tuesday. Harvey’s book is the first story set in space to win the prestigious prize.

Richard Flanagan has won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction for Question 7, a work that is part history and part memoir, which the judges described as a “meditative symphony of a book”. It is the first time in its 26-year history that the UK’s leading non-fiction prize has been awarded to an author who has also won the Booker Prize.