Finalist Rania Abouzeid (Dalia Khamissy)

Five titles are vying for this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize. The $15,000 international award is presented annually to an English-language non-fiction book focused on foreign affairs.

The shortlist was selected by jury chair Janice Stein (Toronto), Anne Applebaum (Warsaw and London, England), Sir Lawrence Freedman (London), Shalini Randeria (Vienna and Geneva), and Frank E. Sysyn (Toronto). No Canadian titles were represented on this year’s list.

• No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria, Rania Abouzeid (W.W. Norton & Company/Penguin Random House Canada)
• The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State, Elizabeth C. Economy (Oxford University Press)
• How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (Crown/PRHC)
• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Timothy Snyder (Tim Duggan Books/PRHC)
• Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Adam Tooze (Viking/PRHC)

The award is presented annually by the Lionel Gelber Foundation, in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The winner will be announced on Feb. 26, followed by a public lecture in Toronto at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy on April 17.