On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe, written by Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock, Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield, has been shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2024. The prize, endowed by former PEN member Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman’s bequest, celebrates the best non-fiction on any historical subject. For more information about the award, see the English Pen press release.
Supporting writers facing persecution and censorship, English PEN's work is sorely needed right now, and I'm honoured that they have selected On Savages Shores for consideration for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, alongside so much wonderful and important historical work.
Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock
Senior Lecturer in International History
On Savage Shores has been recognised as a revolutionary piece of work, ‘flipping the script’ on the accepted narrative that modern global history began when the 'Old World' encountered the 'New'. The book, which is already award-winning, highlights how, as Europe supposedly ‘discovered’ the Americas, tens of thousands of Indigenous Americans simultaneously made the journey east across the Atlantic, and forged the course of European civilisation, just as Europe also changed America. For more information on the book, see the University’s press release.
As well as being shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the book is being adapted for television by an Indigenous-led Canadian production company. Acimow Media is developing Pennock’s book into a three-part docu-drama series called ‘On Distant Shores’. For more information about the TV series, see this press release.
And finally, the book is now out in paperback in both the UK and US and will be out in French translation before Christmas with Albin Michel as L’Europe, ce continent sauvage.