Joya Chatterji, emeritus professor of South Asian history at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College, has won the Wolfson History Prize for her book, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century.

Worth £50,000 (₹53,64,585), the award is described as “the most prestigious history writing prize in the UK”.

Chatterji’s 842-page book is a history of the Indian subcontinent over the past hundred years but it is also part memoir and personal enough to be called “genre defying”.

The judging panel, which included historians Mary Beard, Richard Evans, Sudhir Hazareesingh, Carole Hillenbrand and Diarmaid MacCulloch, called the book “a captivating history of modern South Asia, full of fascinating insights about the lives of its peoples. Written with verve and energy, this book beautifully blends the personal and the historical”.

David Cannadine, chair of the judging panel, said at the prize giving ceremony in London on Monday: “Shadows at Noon is a highly ambitious history of twentieth-century South Asia that defies easy categorisation, combining rigorous historical research with personal reminiscence and family anecdotes.

Chatterji writes with wit and perception, shining a light on themes that have shaped the subcontinent during this period.”

The judges also said: “This unique academic work – interwoven with Chatterji’s own reflections on growing up in India — adopts a conversational writing style, and takes a thematic rather than chronological approach.

“Everyday experiences of food, cinema and the household are given an equal footing to discussions about politics and nationhood. As a result, the cultural vibrancy of South Asia shines through the research, allowing readers a more nuanced understanding of the region.”

There was another Indian=origin professor among the other five shortlisted authors who each received £5,000 – Nandini Das, professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the English faculty at Oxford University and author of Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire.

The other shortlisted books were Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Nicholas Radburn; Our NHS: A History of Britain’s Best-Loved Institution by Andrew Seaton; Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg; and Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 by Frank Trentmann.

Since the Wolfson History Prize was established in 1972 by the Wolfson Foundation, an independent research and education charity, it has been won by some of Britain’s leading historians, among them Simon Schama, Eric Hobsbawm, Amanda Vickery, Antony Beevor, Christopher Bayly, and Antonia Fraser.