The Christopher G. Moore Foundation is pleased to announce that Bad News by Anjan Sundaram is the winner of inaugural Moore Prize 2017, an award that recognises works of non-fiction that advance our understanding of human rights issues. The author will receive an award certificate along with a £1,000 cash prize.

Bad News exposes the dangers that journalists face in trying to report news in a dictatorship. The book shows how a climate of fear can gradually permeate everyone’s lives, destroying any attempts to tell the truth. Setting up a class to encourage local journalists, Sundaram describes how all his students end up being either giving in and writing pro-government propaganda or refusing and ending up in prison. The author ventured outside safety of the capital, at great risk to himself, to discover scenes of devastation, huts with their roofs removed because they were considered primitive, sick children and old people untreated for malaria.

At a time when governments are attacking freedom of expression and investigative journalism, we are witnessing a retreat in human rights exposure and funding. The hope is that books like Bad News will encourage others to keep the light of truth shined on the dark corners where those in power operate with impunity.

Such works of literature deserve wider recognition and discussion. Publicizing the prize will bring these books into the human rights conversation. For more information about the prize, please visit their website: http://www.cgmoorefoundation.com/prize