Judges said the polemical study of deprivation, written using his real name, Darren McGarvey, was ‘exactly the book’ that Orwell would have wanted to win

Scottish rapper Darren McGarvey, who performs under the name Loki, has won the Orwell prize for political books for his searing examination of poverty in Britain, Poverty Safari.

Describing McGarvey’s debut as a modern-day version of George Orwell’s own memoir about poverty, Down and Out in Paris in London, chair of judges Andrew Adonis said Orwell himself would have loved Poverty Safari, a mix of memoir and polemic that sets out to understand “the anger of Britain’s underclass”. The book draws from McGarvey’s own experiences growing up in Pollok, Glasgow with a violent, alcoholic mother and from the testimonies of people in deprived communities around Britain, to argue that both the left and right misunderstand the complexity of poverty as it is experienced.

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The £3,000 Orwell prize goes to the book that comes closest to Orwell’s ambition “to make political writing into an art”, with past winners ranging from Keeper, Andrea Gillies’ memoir about her mother-in-law’s Alzheimer’s to John Bew’s Citizen Clem, a biography of UK primse minister Clement Attlee. This year, Poverty Safari beat titles including Ali Smith’s acclaimed post-Brexit novel Winter and Cordelia Fine’s examination of gender bias, Testosterone Rex.

Adonis said: “As I was chairing the judges I had not the slightest doubt Orwell would have given the prize to this book. It wasn’t just up to Orwell’s standard of writing, but was also [focused on] a very big and powerful Orwellian theme, which was social realism based on personal experience. It’s exactly the book that Orwell would have wanted the prize to go to because it so strongly reflects and takes forward his own mode of writing.”

Adonis, who was joined by fellow judges critic Alex Clark, author Kit de Waal and Financial Times books editor Lorien Kite, said Poverty Safari was “at one and the same time very grisly and very uplifting – and also not predictable”.

“It’s not just a lament against austerity but as much a hymn in praise of the power of the individual. It’s both a big social critique and a big call to individual liberty and empowerment,” he said. “McGarvey says individuals matter and people really do have control of their own destiny, but they are also caught in a social condition that can be a trap.”

“I know the hustle and bustle of high-rise life,” writes McGarvey in Poverty Safari, “the dark and dirty stairwells, the temperamental elevators that smell like urine and wet dog fur, the grumpy concierge, the apprehension you feel as you enter or leave the building, especially at night. I know that sense of being cut off from the world, despite having such a wonderful view of it through a window in the sky; that feeling of isolation, despite being surrounded by hundreds of other people above, below and either side of you. But most of all, I understand the sense that you are invisible, despite the fact that your community can be seen for miles around and is one of the most prominent features of the city skyline.”

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McGarvey, who has lived through extreme poverty, addiction and homelessness and is a former rapper-in-residence at Police Scotland’s violence reduction unit, raised money through crowdfunding to enable him to focus on writing the book for a year. It was published by small Scottish independent Luath Press, but after it reached bestseller lists – and received glowing praise from JK Rowling, who said it was “hard to think of a more timely, powerful or necessary book” – Poverty Safari has now been picked up by Picador, which will co-publish a new paperback with Luath in August.

Luath’s Gavin MacDougall said that he had been “convinced that this book can and will make a real difference to people’s lives” ever since McGarvey first came to see him “with an initial A4 outline of what Poverty Safari might be”.

“Many books, movies and TV series could be described as ‘poverty safaris’ – Down and Out in Paris and London, Chavs, Hillbilly Elegy, The End of Eddy, I, Daniel Blake, Benefits Street and many more,” MacDougall said. “What Darren does in Poverty Safari is analyse his own lived experience to challenge the ‘poverty industry’, and all of us, to rethink our own ways of thinking. We don’t have the muscle to reach the readership this book deserves. Picador does and will.”

McGarvey meanwhile, will be taking the book to the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe in August, in the show Poverty Safari Live.