US: Account of Armenian genocide wins Book Award

An account of the Armenian genocide written by a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota won a Minnesota Book Award this weekend. Taner Akcam was honored for writing "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility." Judges called it a "pioneering work" and "scrupulous account of Turkish responsibility for the killing of close to 1 million Armenians" and praised Akcam and his publisher, Metropolitan Books, for "challenging the country's 90-plus-year denial of intentional genocide." Akcam left Turkey in the 1970s after being prosecuted, jailed, threatened, vilified and harassed.