A transgender boxer’s memoir and Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation are among the six titles vying for the £30,000 prize

From a memoir by the first transgender man to box at Madison Square Garden to a novel inspired by the life of Alan Turing, the exploration of gender is a key theme on the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome book prize.

The £30,000 award is open to fiction and non-fiction, and aims to celebrate a book that best illuminates “the many ways that health, medicine and illness touch our lives”. The six books shortlisted this year include transgender boxer Thomas Page McBee’s memoir Amateur, an exploration of gender and masculinity that judges said “challenges and confounds some of our most ingrained prejudices”, and Will Eaves’s novel Murmur, which fictionalises the period of Alan Turing’s life when the mathematician was undergoing chemical castration, before he killed himself. The chair of judges, novelist Elif Shafak, said it would “grip your mind in the very first pages, break your heart halfway through, and in the end, strangely, unexpectedly, restore your faith in human beings and their endless capacity for resilience”.

“As well as gender, these books also focus on masculinity,” said Shafak. “We are talking about masculinity in a way we’ve never done before, and to see that reflected in the world of literature, fiction and non-fiction, was interesting. The way these books approach the construction of masculinity is very brave, very honest.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thomas Page McBee’s Amateur is nominated for the 2019 Wellcome book prize. Photograph: Michael Sharkey/The Observer

Amateur, she said, explores “what we expect of men, what we expect men to be like, and how that can be a straitjacket”. “As feminists, we’ve always said that the patriarchy makes women unhappy, but we need to emphasise over and over that patriarchy can make men unhappy as well, make them feel restrained, restricted, so this is a very brave voice.” Murmur, meanwhile, analyses “an individual with an amazing mind, who is ahead of his time, and yet constricted by society and its expectations”. “There is masculinity there, but also [asks] how do we treat difference – which is a question we are still dealing with and haven’t been able to solve.”

Sarah Krasnostein’s biography of Sandra Pankhurst, a transgender woman who experienced childhood abuse, prostitution and transphobia before becoming a trauma cleaner, also makes the lineup, praised by judges as a book which “simply crackles with life”, as does Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, in which a young woman enters a year-long drug-induced coma in the hope that a new life would await afterwards. It is “Jane Eyre meets Prozac Nation”, according to the judging panel: “Original, playful and strangely profound.”

The shortlist is completed by playwright Arnold Thomas Fanning’s memoir Mind on Fire, an “unflinching” and “masterfully written” account of the mania, psychosis and depression he experienced in his 20s, and cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar’s Heart, a book that explores the organ through medical research, history and personal stories. “The depth of his knowledge is remarkable, and the breadth of his compassion even more so,” said Shafak.

Shafak said the books on the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome prize tackle timely topics. “They ask difficult questions … they blend personal with scientific research, cultural with historical, they are very creative,” she said. “And these voices are very honest. They are unflinching, very candid, even when they’re across difficult subjects. I find them very brave, every book on our shortlist.”

The winner of the prize, which was taken last year by Mark O’Connell’s exploration of transhumanism, To Be a Machine, will be announced on 1 May.

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