Congo and Crows shortlisted for top UK book prize

LONDON (Reuters) - A warts-and-all biography of author V.S. Naipaul was nominated on Thursday for the 30,000 pound ($58,350) Samuel Johnson Prize, billed as the world's richest non-fiction award.

But Patrick French's critically acclaimed book faces tough competition from an eclectic shortlist of authors who chair of the judges Rosie Boycott said "captured both the surface and underbelly of human existence in all its myriad variations."

"There is murder, betrayal, brutality, beauty and tales of the unexpected," she said in a statement.

The prize will be announced on July 15 and the awards ceremony will be televised on BBC Four.

Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was shortlisted for "Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart" which recreates Victorian explorer H. M. Stanley's famous Congo expedition.

"Crow County" by Mark Cocker recounts his ornithological obsession in a pastoral prose poem while "The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia" by Orlando Figes delves into the hidden histories of ordinary people under the Soviet tyrant.

Patrick French was granted unique access to V.S. Naipaul's private papers for "The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of V.S. Naipaul" that chronicles his complicated love life. Bookmakers William Hill made him the 5-2 favourite.

Second favourite at odds of 3-1 is Kate Summerscale for "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Or The Murder At Road Hill House" about a gruesome killing that inspired a generation of writers from Wilkie Collins to Charles Dickens.

Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker completes the shortlist with "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" that offers a sweeping musical history from pre-war Vienna to the Velvet Underground.

(Reporting by Paul Majendie, editing by Paul Casciato)