The Book Prize Index

Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

Sue Prideaux

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025 One of The New Yorker's Top Books of 2025 One of Vogue's Best Books of 2025 One of the Wall Street Journal's Best Books of the Year One of the New York Public Library's Best Books of 2025 One of the Chicago Public Library's Best Books of 2025 Shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Winner of the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards An original and revealing portrait of the misunderstood French Post-Impressionist artist. Paul Gauguin’s legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism.

BiographyBiography · medium confidenceBiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Biography -> BiographyGoogle Books: Biography & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyGoogle Books: Biography & Autobiography -> BiographyArtistic BiographyTravel, Exploration & Place

Award History

1 wins · 4 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Duff Cooper Prize: History, Biography & Political Science2024WinnerSecondary source
National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyMajor2025LonglistOfficial source
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionMajor2024FinalistSecondary source
Plutarch Award: Biography2026FinalistOfficial source
View all award history (4)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Paul Gauguin98%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Tahiti62%
    • Paris38%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    Gauguin’s scandalous reputation and “transgressive genius” legend are largely undeserved, and his Polynesian paintings arose in part from life choices that exposed the tragic results of French Colonialism.

    Model confidence 66%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    38 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 74%.