TORONTO – A biography of Stalin’s daughter, by University of Toronto professor emeritus Rosemary Sullivan, has won this year’s $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Sullivan took the prize for “Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva” (HarperCollins Canada) at a gala at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Tuesday.

Born in Quebec, Sullivan is a poet, biographer and anthologist who has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

She beat four other finalists — Douglas Coupland, Eliott Behar, Dean Jobb and Lynette Loeppky — who each received $5,000.

Jury members Stevie Cameron, Will Ferguson and JJ Lee read 97 books submitted by 51 publishers.

They called Sullivan’s book an “insightful yet empathetic portrait of Svetlana Alliluyeva.”

“‘Stalin’s Daughter’ expansively intertwines history, political intrigue, espionage and domestic drama, yet Sullivan hones the episodes to one struggle: Alliluyeva’s attempt to escape her father’s shadow,” the jury said in a statement.

“When the ‘Soviet Princess’ died, she was treated in the media more like a post-Cold War curiosity. Sullivan’s book delivers a fully wrought literary heroine.”

The prize is billed as the richest annual literary award for a book of non-fiction published in Canada.

It’s named after Hon. Hilary M. Weston, who served as the 26th lieutenant-governor of Ontario from 1997 to 2002.