Booker Prize

 

an annual prize of £50,000 (originally £20,000) for a work of fiction by a living British, Irish, or Commonwealth writer. Great Britain's premier literary award, it has been underwritten since 1969 by the British food-distribution company Booker PLC, now part of The Big Food Group PLC. In 2002 the Man Group, a British hedge fund, became a co-sponsor of the award, which was officially renamed the Man Booker Prize. Recipients have included Nadine Gordimer, Iris Murdoch, Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt, Peter Carey, and Ian McEwan. In 2004 an additional award, the Man Booker International Prize, was introduced. An award of £60,000 given for overall achievement in fiction, it is presented every two years to a living author of any nationality whose fiction is either written in English or is generally available in English translation. It was first given (2005) to the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland.

The winner of the Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success. It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be nominated for the Booker longlist or selected for inclusion in the shortlist. In 1993, the Booker of Bookers Prize was awarded to Salman Rushdie for Midnight's Children (the 1981 winner), as the best novel to win the award in the first 25 years of its existence.

For a complete list of winning and shortlisted authors, see List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction.

History

The prize was originally known as the Booker-McConnell Prize after the company Booker-McConnell began sponsoring the event in 1968, and became commonly known as the "Booker Prize" or simply "the Booker". When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain "Booker" as part of the official title of the prize. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £21,000, and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group.

Judging

The selection process for the winner of the prize commences with the formation of an advisory committee which includes an author, two publishers, a literary agent, a bookseller, a librarian, and a chairperson appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation. The advisory committee then selects the judging panel, the membership of which changes each year, although on rare occasions a judge may be selected a second time.

To maintain the consistent excellence of the prize, judges are selected from amongst leading literary critics, writers, academics and notable public figures.

Booker Prize winners

Year	Author	Country	Title
1969	P H Newby	United Kingdom	Something to Answer For
1970	Bernice Rubens	United Kingdom	The Elected Member
1971	V S Naipaul	Trinidad and Tobago/ United Kingdom	In a Free State
1972	John Berger	United Kingdom	G
1973	J G Farrell	United Kingdom	The Siege of Krishnapur
1974	Nadine Gordimer Stanley Middleton	South Africa  United Kingdom	The Conservationist Holiday
1975	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	United Kingdom/ Germany	Heat and Dust
1976	David Storey	United Kingdom	Saville
1977	Paul Scott	United Kingdom	Staying On
1978	Iris Murdoch	Ireland/ United Kingdom	The Sea, the Sea
1979	Penelope Fitzgerald	United Kingdom	Offshore
1980	William Golding	United Kingdom	Rites of Passage
1981	Salman Rushdie	United Kingdom/ India	Midnight's Children
1982	Thomas Keneally	Australia	Schindler's Ark
1983	J M Coetzee	South Africa/ Australia	Life & Times of Michael K
1984	Anita Brookner	United Kingdom	Hotel du Lac
1985	Keri Hulme	New Zealand	The Bone People
1986	Kingsley Amis	United Kingdom	The Old Devils
1987	Penelope Lively	United Kingdom	Moon Tiger
1988	Peter Carey	Australia	Oscar and Lucinda
1989	Kazuo Ishiguro	United Kingdom/ Japan	The Remains of the Day
1990	A S Byatt	United Kingdom	Possession: A Romance
1991	Ben Okri	Nigeria	The Famished Road
1992	Michael Ondaatje Barry Unsworth	Sri Lanka/ Canada  United Kingdom	The English Patient Sacred Hunger
1993	Roddy Doyle	Ireland	Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994	James Kelman	United Kingdom	How Late It Was, How Late
1995	Pat Barker	United Kingdom	The Ghost Road
1996	Graham Swift	United Kingdom	Last Orders
1997	Arundhati Roy	India	The God of Small Things
1998	Ian McEwan	United Kingdom	Amsterdam
1999	J M Coetzee	South Africa/ Australia	Disgrace
2000	Margaret Atwood	Canada	The Blind Assassin
2001	Peter Carey	Australia	True History of the Kelly Gang
2002	Yann Martel	Canada	Life of Pi
2003	DBC Pierre	Australia/ Mexico	Vernon God Little
2004	Alan Hollinghurst	United Kingdom	The Line of Beauty
2005	John Banville	Ireland	The Sea
2006	Kiran Desai	India	The Inheritance of Loss
2007	Anne Enright	Ireland	The Gathering

Booker facts & statistics

• Each publisher's imprint may submit two titles. In addition, previous winners of the prize and those who have been shortlisted in the previous ten years are automatically considered. Books may also be 'called in': publishers can make written representations to the judges to consider titles in addition to those already entered. In the 21st Century the average number of books considered by the judges has been approximately 130.
• The list of books making the longlist was first released in 2001. In 2003 there were 23 books on the longlist, in 2002 there were 20 and in 2001 there were 24.
• For the first 35 years of the Booker, there were only five years when fewer than six books were on the shortlist, and two years (1980 and 1981) when there were seven on the shortlist.
• As of (2003):
  • Over the first 35 years there were a total of 201 novels from 134 authors on the shortlists.
  • Of the 97 novelists nominated once, there were 13 winners and three joint winners.
  • Of the 19 novelists nominated twice, there were seven winners and one two-time winner (J. M. Coetzee).
  • Of the 10 novelists nominated three times, there were four winners, one joint winner and one two-time winner (Peter Carey).
  • Of the six four-time nominees, all but William Trevor have won once. The other four-time nominees are Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Keneally and Penelope Fitzgerald.
  • There have only been two five-time nominees, Margaret Atwood (first nominated in 1986 and won in 2000) and Beryl Bainbridge (nominated twice in the 1970s and three times in the 1990s, but she has never won).
  • There has been only one six-time nominee, Iris Murdoch, who won on her fourth nomination in 1978 and was nominated twice more in the 1980s.

Related awards

A separate prize for which any living author in the world may qualify, the Man Booker International Prize, was inaugurated in 2005 and awarded biannually. A Russian version of the Booker Prize was created in 1992.

See also

• List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction
• The Commonwealth Writers Prize
• The National Book Award
• The Prix Goncourt
• The Whitbread Book Awards
• The Governor General's Award
• The Giller Prize
• The Miles Franklin Award
• List of British literary awards
• List of literary awards

External links

• The official website of the Man Booker Prize
• The most honoured Booker shortlisted books
• A primer on the Man Booker Prize and critical review of literature.

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