Subhash Jaireth’s collection of essays, Spinoza’s Overcoat (Transit Lounge, 2020), is the 2021 ACT Book of the Year.

The essays, which explore the lives of writers, poets, and their travels, received the $10,000 prize.

Two other works by local authors were highly commended, and three shortlisted.

Born in India, Jaireth has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in Hindi, Russian, and English. He is the author of the novel After Love (2012) and the short-story collection Moments (2014).

Spinoza’s Overcoat is a collection of essays on the writers, and their writing, that have enriched his own life. The works of Franz Kafka, Marina Tsvetaeva, Mikhail Bulgakov, Paul Celan, Hiromi Ito, Baruch Spinoza, and others ignite in him the urge to travel (both physically and in spirit), almost like a pilgrim, to the places where such writers were born or died or wrote.

Drawing on years of research, translation, and travel, Spinoza’s Overcoat illuminates loss, mortality, and the reverie of writing.

“Subhash Jaireth is a writer of international significance, and Spinoza’s Overcoat represents the culmination of decades of work,” the judges declared. “This major achievement takes a broad literary perspective, pushing form and progression of poetics. This is first-class cultural criticism, in a voice that is daring and rare, moving and lifting. Subhash Jaireth is a superb writer, poet, and researcher, and above all true to himself.”

Bernard Collaery’s Oil Under Troubled Water, exposing Australia’s intrigue in East Timor, and Moya Pacey’s volume of poetry, Doggerland, were highly commended.

• Bernard Collaery exposé on ACT Book of the Year shortlist (19 September)

Two more volumes of poetry, Dr PS Cottier’s Utterly and Dr Penelope Layland’s Nigh, and Dr Patrick Mullins’ The Trials of Portnoy, a history of the end of censorship, were shortlisted.

All books are available to borrow from ACT Libraries.

Arts minister Tara Cheyne congratulated Subhash Jaireth for his “moving collection of essays”, and those highly commended and shortlisted for the award.

“It’s wonderful to see such original and significant books originating from the ACT’s literary community,” she said.

Nominations for the 2022 ACT Book of the Year are now open. Go to the artsACT website for more information.