The Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage is an annual Polish literary prize established in 2010 by the Capital City of Warsaw in cooperation with Gazeta Wyborcza. Honorary patronage over the award was assumed by Alicja Kapuścińska, the wife of its patron.
The award honours the legacy of Ryszard Kapuściński — one of the greatest Polish reporters and writers of the twentieth century — and recognises the finest works of literary reportage published on the Polish market, by both Polish and foreign authors.
It is given in two categories: for literary reportage and for translation of reportage into Polish. Publishers submit nominations; a five-member jury selects a long list of ten titles and then a final shortlist of five. The award ceremony takes place annually in Warsaw.
| Year | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Andrzej Dybczak | Forest of Spirits |
| 2024 | Fernanda Melchor | This Is Not Miami |
| 2023 | Anna Goc | The Silence |
| 2022 | Ander Izagirre | Potosí: The Mountain That Eats Men |
| 2021 | Jessica Bruder | Nomadland |
| 2020 | Katarzyna Kobylarczyk | The Scab |
| 2019 | Maciej Zaremba | The House with Two Towers |
| 2018 | Anna Bikont | Sendler: In Hiding |
| 2017 | Rana Dasgupta | Capital: The Eruption of Delhi |
| 2016 | Paweł Reszka | The Devil and a Bar of Chocolate |
| 2015 | William Dalrymple | Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan |
| 2014 | Elisabeth Åsbrink | And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Still Stand |
| 2013 | Ed Vulliamy | Amexica: War Along the Borderline |
| 2012 | Liao Yiwu | The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up |
| 2011 | Svetlana Alexievich | The Unwomanly Face of War |
| 2010 | Jean Hatzfeld | The Antelope’s Strategy |
Below are the books nominated for the Ryszard Kapuściński Award over successive years — both the winners and the finalists who distinguished themselves in the competition for this prestigious prize.
Andrzej Dybczak · Poland
A reportage about the forest peoples of Siberia, their spiritual world, and their struggle to preserve their identity in the face of modernisation. Winner of the 17th Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.
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Fernanda Melchor · Mexico
A collection of literary reportages about violence, crime, and the social margins in the Mexican city of Veracruz. Winner of the 16th Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.
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Anna Goc · Poland
A reportage about the world of the Deaf — their language, culture, identity, and decades-long struggle against a system that tried to assimilate them by force.
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Ander Izagirre · Spain
A reportage about the miners of Potosí — a city that has fed the world at the cost of its own people since the sixteenth century. Cerro Rico still consumes human lives.
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Jessica Bruder · USA
A reportage about Americans in retirement age who, after the 2008 crisis, live in vehicles and travel the country in search of seasonal work.
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Katarzyna Kobylarczyk · Poland
A reportage about Spain reopening wounds from Francoism — about the exhumation of mass graves, families of victims, and a history the state refused to tell for decades.
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Maciej Zaremba · Sweden
A personal family saga about Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Sweden — a story of identity, silence, and secrets uncovered decades later.
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Anna Bikont · Poland
A biographical reportage about Irena Sendler — the woman who saved approximately 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. Anna Bikont spent years collecting testimonies.
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Rana Dasgupta · United Kingdom
A portrait of contemporary Delhi as a mirror of global capitalism — about new wealth, slums, and the class gulf in a twenty-first-century metropolis.
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Paweł Reszka · Poland
Reportages about invisible Poland — about people trapped in a sense of defeat, domestic violence, shame, and incomprehension. Sharp, precise reportage by Paweł Reszka.
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William Dalrymple · Scotland / United Kingdom
An epic reconstruction of the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842) and its terrifying parallels with later attempts to conquer the country.
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Elisabeth Åsbrink · Sweden
The story of Otto Ullmann — a Jewish boy sent from Vienna to Sweden in 1939 — and Swedish silence in the face of the Holocaust that consumed his parents.
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Ed Vulliamy · United Kingdom
A reportage from the Mexican-American borderland — a separate civilisation where cartels, smuggling, and violence have created a brutal parallel state.
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Liao Yiwu · China
Interviews with people from the very lowest strata of Chinese society — beggars, fortune-tellers, thieves, prostitutes. The voices of those the system wanted to make invisible.
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Svetlana Alexievich · Belarus
Testimonies of women soldiers of the Red Army — about war as seen by women, a story official history never wanted to tell. Nobel Prize 2015.
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Jean Hatzfeld · France
The third part of Hatzfeld's Rwandan trilogy — on whether reconciliation between the victims and perpetrators of genocide is even possible.
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