Indian-origin historian Sunil Amrith wins 2025 British Academy Book Prize

Sunil Amrith's 'The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years' wins £25,000 British Academy Prize', tracing 500 years of human impact on the planet

Indian-origin historian Sunil Amrith has won this year’s British Academy Book Prize for his latest work, The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years. The award, valued at £25,000, recognises outstanding non-fiction books that deepen understanding of our world. 

Amrith, a Yale University history professor, was born in Kenya to South Indian parents, grew up in Singapore and graduated from the University of Cambridge in England.

 

A book on climate and human history

Judges described Amrith’s book as an essential read in the context of today’s climate crisis. The award was presented during a ceremony held at the British Academy in London on Wednesday evening. 

 

“I’ve sometimes been asked whether The Burning Earth is a bleak book,” Amrith said via live video from the US. “There’s no doubt it details a great deal of harm and suffering, both human and environmental, and it shows that the two were almost always interlinked. But in the end, what I’d like readers to take away is a sense of the many paths not taken, ideas that have been forgotten, movements that may have failed but left a lasting legacy, and technologies that were humbler and more sustainable,” he said. 

Amrith further said, “And perhaps we can find, in returning to those paths not taken, seeds of inspiration for a more hopeful and less violent way of living together on this planet, which we share with each other and with so much other life that we depend on.”

 

Judges praise the work

Professor Rebecca Earle, chair of the judges and a UK-based historian, called The Burning Earth “a magisterial account of the interconnections between human history and environmental transformation”. “It is vivid in detail and beautifully written — important reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins of today’s climate crisis,” she said. 

Amrith “is a remarkable scholar whose global perspective reveals the impact of the environment on human history, as well as our impact on the environment. In fact, as he shows, it’s not really possible to separate these two”, Earle said. 

She mentioned that while choosing a winner from six exceptional entries was challenging, the panel agreed that Amrith’s book “exemplified the spirit of the prize: to deepen understanding of our world”. 

The British Academy highlighted Amrith’s decades of meticulous research, showing how colonisation, industrialisation and changing human settlement patterns shaped the modern world and fuelled the climate crisis. The book spans continents and centuries, covering events from the conquest of the Americas to British gold mining in South Africa, the Black Death and World War II.

 

Other shortlisted works

The five other shortlisted titles, each receiving £1,000, included:

• The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple

• The Baton and The Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin by Lucy Ash

• Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill

• Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women’s Health by Sophie Harman

• Sound Tracks: A Musical Detective Story by Graeme Lawson

 

Established in 2013, the British Academy Book Prize honours exceptional non-fiction writing in the humanities and social sciences. Eligible books must be published in the UK and available in English, though authors can be of any nationality and write in any language.

 

[With agency inputs]