US reporter's Iraq saga wins top non-fiction prize

LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) An American reporter's account of the surreal world inside Baghdad's top security Green Zone was named as winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, billed as the world's richest award for non-fiction.

The 30,000 pound (60,000 dollars) prize was given to the Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran yesterday for his ''Imperial Life in the Emerald City'', which took readers into a bubble of startling Americana.

''Imperial Life in the Emerald City is up there with the greatest reportage of the last 50 years - as fine as (John) Hershey on Hiroshima and (Truman) Capote's In Cold Blood,'' said Helena Kennedy, chairwoman of the judges.

''The writing is cool, exact and never overstated and in many places very humorous as the jaw-dropping idiocy of the American action is revealed,'' she added in praising the book that was drawn from hundreds of interviews and internal documents.

REUTERS RJ VC0840