Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism has won the Warwick Prize for Writing, a new international award that honours the best work on a theme set by Britain's University of Warwick.

Klein, a Toronto-based journalist who writes regularly for The Nation and The Guardian, wins $89,825 Cdn).

"The Shock Doctrine is a brilliant, provocative, outstandingly written investigation into some of the great outrages of our time," said author China Mieville, chair of the judging panel.

Klein's book explores how multi-nationals were able to use conservative economic ideas developed 50 years ago to benefit from disasters such as the Iraq War, the Southeast Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

The Shock Doctrine is being translated into 27 languages and won the Canadian Booksellers Association's Libris Award for non-fiction book of the year.

Klein's first book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies was also an international bestseller and her documentary film, The Take, looked at Argentina's occupied factories.

This year's theme for the Warwick Prize was complexity and six international authors made the short list with books that had different takes on the theme. The other finalists were:

  • Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 by Lisa Appignanesi.
  • The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? by Francisco Goldman.
  • Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart A. Kauffman.
  • The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross.
  • Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas (translated by Jonathan Dunne).

The next Warwick Prize, to be awarded in 2011, will be for books on the theme of colour.