Louise Brangan’s The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence, which draws on archives and survivors’ testimonies in The Fallen to reveal the dark history of the laundries and Ireland’s legacy of silence, is one of eight shortlisted titles selected from almost 400 international submissions for the 2026 Cundill History Prize.Administered by McGill University, the Cundill History Prize is the world’s leading award for history writing. The $75,000 prize is awarded annually to the book that demonstrates excellence across the prize’s guiding criteria: craft, communication and consequence. The two runners-up each receive $10,000. From the world’s first Jewish ghetto to Indigenous enslavement in North America, from Chinese life under American racial law to the reshaping of modern South Asia and the global life of an everyday commodity, the shortlist highlights books that uncover forgotten voices and speak to our current context of conflict, nationalism and globalised commodity chains.The shortlist also illuminates untold histories such as the key role of Christianity in the personality cult at the heart of North Korea’s dictatorship, recovers overlooked voices like those of the women incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, and shines new light on familiar subjects, including that of the American constitution. Together, they showcase the range and excellence of contemporary history writing.Chaired by Emily Greenwood, James F. Rothenberg Professor of Classics at Harvard University, the 2026 jury includes leading historians and writers Ned Blackhawk, Fergal Keane and Barbara Weinstein.Greenwood said: “I feel a great sense of excitement and conviction about this shortlist. Each book on this list invites readers into an absorbing prose world and leaves them with a different reckoning of history. “Taken together, they uncover histories that have been forgotten, silenced, or simply not intuited because we lacked the evidence and interpretative frameworks to grasp unobvious connections and to question settled accounts. Crucially, each shortlisted work encompasses different domains of history and evinces subtle, interdisciplinary ways of knowing the past and how we relate to it, blending fresh archival research, deep historical acumen, and strong narrative verve.”The shortlistLouise Brangan – The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence (Bodley Head)Jonathan Cheng – Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult (Knopf)Sam Dalrymple – Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins)Linford D. Fisher – Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History (Liveright/W.W. Norton)Eric T. Jennings – Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean (Yale University Press)Alexander Lee – The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews (Picador)Jill Lepore – We The People: A History of the US Constitution (Liveright/John Murray Press)Beth Lew-Williams – John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)The three finalists will be announced on September 30th, with the winner revealed on October 23rd as part of the Cundill History Prize Festival in Montreal.Cundill Prize shortlist Tomorrow’s books pagesIn The Irish Times tomorrow, Sebastian Barry tells me about his latest novel, The Newer world, and reflects on his troubled upbringing and distinguished career. Carlo Gébler tells Lara Marlowe about his memoir of his mother Edna O’Brien’s last years and death in 2024. And there is a Q&A with the author Elizabeth Wassell Montague.Reviews are John Connolly on For the Dead Remember: The Life of M.R. James by Darryl Jones; Peter Lonsdale on the Cambridge Companion to Martin Amis; Edel Coffey on Death Do Us by Ruthy Mason; Brian Cliff and Elizabeth Mannion on the best new crime fiction; Claire Adam on The Disappearers by Marlon James; Mei Chin on The Bridge by Colm Tóibín; Pat Carty on Prophets, Profits, Caches and Kings by Jared Diamond; Margaret Hickey on The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands by Huw Lewis-Jones; Michael O’Loughlin on Anna Arno’s Paul Celan: A Life; Andrew Lynch on Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers by Hannah Lucinda Smith; Sara Keating on children’s books; Roe McDermott on Susan Stryker’s Changing Gender: The History and Future of a Concept; and Neil Hegarty on Setting the Land Free: Visions of a Rewilded Ireland by Eoghan Daltun.