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H is for Hawk

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Publisher
  
Jonathan Cape

Pages
  
300 pp.

Originally published
  
31 July 2014

Genre
  
Memoir

Awards
  
Baillie Gifford Prize

3.7/5
Goodreads

Publication date
  
2014

ISBN
  
0-224-09700-8

Author
  
Helen Macdonald

OCLC
  
898117636

H is for Hawk t2gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcRtDn4inRN5hjIIt1

Nominations
  
Goodreads Choice Awards Best Nonfiction, National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir/Autobiography

Similar
  
Helen Macdonald books, Baillie Gifford Prize winners, Memoirs

Helen macdonald h is for hawk


H is for Hawk is a memoir by British author Helen Macdonald. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book of the Year award among other honours.

Contents

Helen macdonald 5x15 h is for hawk


Content

H is for Hawk tells Macdonald's story of the year she spent training a goshawk in the wake of her father's death. Her father, Alisdair Macdonald, was a respected photojournalist who died suddenly of a heart attack in 2007. Having been a falconer for many years, she purchased a young goshawk to help her through the grieving process.

Reception

The book reached the The Sunday Times best-seller list within two weeks of being published in July 2014.

In an interview with The Guardian, Macdonald said, "While the backbone of the book is a memoir about that year when I lost my father and trained a hawk, there are also other things tangled up in that story which are not memoir. There is the shadow biography of TH White, and a lot of nature-writing, too. I was trying to let these different genres speak to each other."

Judges of the Samuel Johnson Prize specifically highlighted that marriage of genres as one of the reasons for selecting H is for Hawk as the winner.

Awards and honours

  • 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize, winner
  • 2014 Costa Book of the Year, winner.
  • 2014 Duff Cooper Prize, shortlist.
  • 2015 Thwaites Wainwright Prize, longlist.
  • 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, shortlist.
  • 2016 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, winner
  • References

    H is for Hawk Wikipedia