American scholar and author Camilla Townsend. Townsend won the Cundill History Prize on Thursday for her book Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.Esti Lamm/The Canadian Press
American scholar and author Camilla Townsend has won a US$75,000 history book prize from McGill University.
The professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey received the Cundill History Prize on Thursday for “Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.”
The book draws from long-overlooked primary accounts of Indigenous people written in the language Nahuatl to challenge Eurocentric narratives about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century.
The 2020 Cundill History Prize finalists on how their works speak to the present
Book excerpts: Cundill Prize finalists Fifth Sun, Tacky’s Revolt and The Anarchy
The jury hailed Townsend for recasting history “through the eyes of the Indigenous people themselves rather than those of their conquerors.”
The international Cundill prize, which is run by McGill University, recognizes non-fiction history writing in English.
The runners-up, who each receive US$10,000, are Harvard University professor Vincent Brown and British historian William Dalrymple.
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