‘The Blood Telegram’ wins the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize

TORONTO – Gary J. Bass has won the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize for his book, “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide.”

The Princeton University professor beat four other finalists for the $15,000 award, which recognizes a “non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues.”

Jury chair William Thorsell praised “The Blood Telegram” (published by Alfred A. Knopf) for offering “a brilliant portrait of the tragic birth of Bangladesh.”

Bass is a former reporter for The Economist. He has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, The New Republic, and Slate.

Prize organizers say he will accept the award and give a free public lecture at the University of Toronto on April 24.

The award was founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber. It is presented annually by the Lionel Gelber Foundation, in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine and the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

This year’s shortlist included “Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941” by Lynne Olson (Random House); “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety” by Eric Schlosser (The Penguin Press); “Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present” by Brendan Simms (Basic Books); and “The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order” by Benn Steil (Princeton University Press.)

“The Blood Telegram” was singled out for its keen insight.

“He produces shocking revelations about the role of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in backing Pakistan’s genocidal suppression of democracy in Bangladesh, even as American diplomats on the ground described the horrors around them,” Thorsell said Monday in a release.

“This is an epic tale told with verve and authority about war and diplomacy in toxic embrace.”