H is for Hawk
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| Author | Helen Macdonald |
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| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
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Publication date
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2014 |
| Pages | 300 pp. |
| Awards | Samuel Johnson Prize, Costa Book of the Year |
| ISBN | 0-224-09700-8 |
| OCLC | 898117636 |
H is for Hawk is a memoir by British author Helen Macdonald. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book of the Year award among other honours.
Content
H is for Hawk tells Macdonald's story of the year she spent training a goshawk in the wake of her father's death. Her father, Alisdair Macdonald, was a respected photojournalist who died suddenly of a heart attack in 2007. Having been a falconer for many years, she purchased a young goshawk to help her through the grieving process.
Reception
The book reached the The Sunday Times best-seller list within two weeks of being published in July 2014.[1]
In an interview with The Guardian, Macdonald said, "While the backbone of the book is a memoir about that year when I lost my father and trained a hawk, there are also other things tangled up in that story which are not memoir. There is the shadow biography of TH White, and a lot of nature-writing, too. I was trying to let these different genres speak to each other."[2]
Judges of the Samuel Johnson Prize specifically highlighted that marriage of genres as one of the reasons for selecting H is for Hawk as the winner.[2]
Awards and honours
- 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize, winner[3]
- 2014 Costa Book of the Year, winner.[4]
- 2014 Duff Cooper Prize, shortlist.[5]
- 2015 Thwaites Wainwright Prize, longlist.[5]
- 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, shortlist.[6]
References
- ↑ Cambridge News, INTERVIEW: Cambridge author Helen Macdonald on grief, goshawks, and her best-selling book, H is for Hawk, Cambridge News, 7 September 2014.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Stephen Moss, Helen Macdonald: a bird’s eye view of love and loss, The Guardian, 5 November 2014.
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