Marlene Daut awarded 2026 James Tait Black Prize
Daut, Professor of French and of Black Studies, was recognized for her latest book, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe.
Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and of Black Studies, has been awarded the 2026 James Tait Black Prize for her book The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025).
The James Tait Black Prize is the United Kingdom’s longest-running literary award, established in 1919 by the University of Edinburgh. Scholars and students of literature at the university serve as the judges for the prize. Winners are awarded £10,000.
Daut’s book was selected from over 500 submissions. Professor Alex Tomson, Head of the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, said that Daut’s book “offers a powerful re-examination of Haiti’s revolutionary history.” He added that the prize-winning works “demonstrate the remarkable power of literature to illuminate lives, histories and communities that are often overlooked” and “reflect the ambition, originality and global perspective that the prizes have celebrated for more than a century.”
With this most recent accolade, The First and Last King of Haiti will have won four awards: the 2026 James Tait Black Prize in Biography, the 2026 Gilbert Chinard Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies, the 2026 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, and the 2025 Haitian Studies Association Book Prize. The book was also a finalist for the 2025 Cundill History Prize and was ranked among the best books of 2025 by the Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Independent Review of Books, and the California Review of Books.
Daut has written other award-winning books that explore Haitian history through a critical lens, such as Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), A History of Haitian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).