Man Booker Prize

For the related biennial prize given to an author of anynationality, see Man Booker International Prize.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction (formerly knownas the Booker-McConnell Prize and commonly knownsimply as the Booker Prize) is a literary prize awardedeach year for the best original novel, written in the Englishlanguage, and published in the UK. The winner of theMan Booker Prize is generally assured of internationalrenown and success; therefore, the prize is of great sig-nificance for the book trade.[1]

The Booker Prize is greeted with great anticipation andfanfare.[2] It is also a mark of distinction for authors to beselected for inclusion in the shortlist or even to be nomi-nated for the “longlist”.

1 History and administration

The prize was originally known as the Booker-McConnellPrize, after the company Booker-McConnell began spon-soring the event in 1968;[3] it became commonly knownas the “Booker Prize” or simply “the Booker.” When ad-ministration of the prize was transferred to the BookerPrize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became theinvestment company Man Group, which opted to retain“Booker” as part of the official title of the prize. Thefoundation is an independent registered charity funded bythe entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which itis the sole shareholder.[4] The prize money awarded withthe Booker Prize was originally £21,000, and was subse-quently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorshipof the Man Group, making it one of the world’s richestliterary prizes.In 1970 Bernice Rubens became the first woman to winthe Booker Prize, for The Elected Member.[5] The rulesof the Booker changed in 1971; previously, it had beenawarded retrospectively to books published prior to theyear in which the awardwas given. In 1971 the year of eli-gibility was changed to the same as the year of the award;in effect, this meant that books published in 1970 werenot considered for the Booker in either year. The BookerPrize Foundation announced in January 2010 the creationof a special award called the "Lost Man Booker Prize,”with the winner chosen from a longlist of 22 novels pub-lished in 1970.[6]

Alice Munro has a unique place in Booker Prize history;The Beggar Maid is the only short story collection to have

been shortlisted. (It was shortlisted in 1980.)[7]

Before 2001, each year’s longlist of nominees was notpublicly revealed.[8]

John Sutherland, who was a judge for the 1999 prize, hassaid,

There is a well-established London liter-ary community. Rushdie doesn't get shortlistednow because he has attacked that community.That is not a good game plan if you want towin the Booker. Norman Mailer has found thesame thing in the US – you have to 'be a citi-zen' if you want to win prizes. The real scan-dal is that [Martin] Amis has never won theprize. In fact, he has only been shortlisted onceand that was for Time’s Arrow, which was notone of his strongest books. That really is suspi-cious. He pissed people off with Dead Babiesand that gets lodged in the culture. There isalso the feeling that he has always looked to-wards America.[9]

1.1 Controversies

In 1972, the winning writer John Berger, known forhis Marxist worldview, protested during his acceptancespeech against Booker McConnell. He blamed Booker’s130 years of sugar production in the Caribbean for the re-gion’s modern poverty.[10][11] Berger donated half of his£5,000 prize to the British Black Panther movement, be-cause they had a socialist and revolutionary perspectivein agreement with his own.[3][10][12]

In 1980, Anthony Burgess, writer of Earthly Powers, re-fused to attend the ceremony unless it was confirmed tohim in advance whether he had won.[3] His was one of twobooks considered likely to win, the other being Rites ofPassage byWilliam Golding. The judges decided only 30minutes before the ceremony, giving the prize to Golding.Both novels had been seen as favourites to win leading upto the prize, and the dramatic “literary battle” betweentwo senior writers made front page news.[3][13]

1983’s judging produced a draw between J. M. Coetzee'sLife & Times of Michael K and Salman Rushdie's Shame,leaving chair of judges FayWeldon to choose between thetwo. According to Stephen Moss in The Guardian, “Herarm was bent and she chose Rushdie” only to change hermind as the result was being phoned through.[9]

1

2 4 RELATED AWARDS

In 1993, two of the judges threatened to walk out whenTrainspotting appeared on the longlist; Irvine Welsh'snovel was pulled from the shortlist to satisfy them. Thenovel would later receive critical acclaim, and is now con-sidered Welsh’s masterpiece.[14]

The award has been criticised for the types of books itcovers. In 1981, nominee John Banville wrote a letter toThe Guardian requesting that the prize be given to himso that he could use the money to buy every copy of thelonglisted books in Ireland and donate them to libraries,“thus ensuring that the books not only are bought but alsoread — surely a unique occurrence.”[3][15]

In 1994, journalist Richard Gott described the prize as “asignificant and dangerous iceberg in the sea of British cul-ture that serves as a symbol of its current malaise.”[3][16]

In 1997, the decision to award Arundhati Roy's The Godof Small Things proved controversial. Carmen Callil,chair of the previous year’s Booker judges, called it an“execrable” book and said on television that it shouldn'teven have been on the shortlist. Booker Prize chair-man Martyn Goff said Roy won because nobody ob-jected, following the rejection by the judges of BernardMacLaverty's shortlisted book due to their dismissal ofhim as “a wonderful short-story writer and that GraceNotes was three short stories strung together.”[17]

In 2001, A. L. Kennedy, who was a judge in 1996, calledthe prize “a pile of crooked nonsense” with the winner de-termined by “who knows who, who’s sleeping with who,who’s selling drugs to who, who’s married to who, whoseturn it is”.[9]

Between 2005 and 2008, the Booker Prize alternated be-tween writers from Ireland and India. “Outsider” JohnBanville began this trend in 2005 when his novel The Seawas selected as a surprise winner:[18] Boyd Tonkin, lit-erary editor of The Independent, famously condemnedit as “possibly the most perverse decision in the historyof the award” and rival novelist Tibor Fischer pouredscorn on Banville’s victory.[19] Kiran Desai of India wonin 2006. Anne Enright's 2007 victory came about dueto a jury badly split over Ian McEwan's novel On ChesilBeach. The following year it was India’s turn again, withAravind Adiga narrowly defeating Enright’s fellow Irish-man Sebastian Barry.[20]

1.2 Expansion to include authors regard-less of country of origin

Historically, the winner of the Man Booker Prize hadbeen required to be a citizen of the Commonwealth ofNations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. On 18September 2013 the media announced that future ManBooker Prize awards would consider authors from any-where in the world, so long as their work was in Englishand published in the UK.[21] This change proved contro-versial in literary circles. Former winner A. S. Byatt and

former judge JohnMullan said the prize risked diluting itsidentity, whereas former judge A.L. Kennedy welcomedthe change.[22]

2 Judging

The selection process for the winner of the prize com-mences with the formation of an advisory committeewhich includes a writer, two publishers, a literary agent,a bookseller, a librarian, and a chairperson appointed bythe Booker Prize Foundation. The advisory committeethen selects the judging panel, the membership of whichchanges each year, although on rare occasions a judgemay be selected a second time. Judges are selected fromamongst leading literary critics, writers, academics andleading public figures.The winner is usually announced at a ceremony in Lon-don’s Guildhall, usually in early October.

3 Winners

See also: List of winners and shortlisted authors of theBooker Prize for Fiction

In 1993 to mark the 25th anniversary it was decided tochoose a Booker of Bookers Prize. Three previous judgesof the award, Malcolm Bradbury, David Holloway andW. L. Webb, met and chose Salman Rushdie'sMidnight’sChildren (the 1981 winner) as “the best novel out of allthe winners.”[23]

A similar prize known as The Best of the Booker wasawarded in 2008 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of theprize. A shortlist of six winners was chosen and the de-cision was left to a public vote. The winner was againMidnight’s Children.[24][25]

[1] In 1971, the nature of the Prize was changed so that it wasawarded to novels published in that year instead of in theprevious year; therefore, no novel published in 1970 couldwin the Booker Prize. This was rectified in 2010 by theawarding of the "Lost Man Booker Prize" to J. G. Farrell’sTroubles.[26]

4 Related awards

A separate prize for which any living writer in the worldmay qualify, the Man Booker International Prize, was in-augurated in 2005 and is awarded biennially. A Russianversion of the Booker Prize was created in 1992 calledthe Booker-Open Russia Literary Prize, also known asthe Russian Booker Prize. In 2007, Man Group plc es-tablished theMan Asian Literary Prize, an annual literaryaward given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either

3

written in English or translated into English, and pub-lished in the previous calendar year.

5 Cheltenham Booker Prize

As part of The Times' Literature Festival in Cheltenham,a Booker event is held on the last Saturday of the festi-val. Four guest speakers/judges debate a shortlist of fourbooks from a given year from before the introduction ofthe Booker prize, and a winner is chosen. Unlike the realMan Booker, writers from outside the Commonwealthare also considered. In 2008, the winner for 1948 wasAlan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, beating NormanMailer's The Naked and the Dead, Graham Greene's TheHeart of the Matter and Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One.

6 See also

• List of British literary awards

• List of literary awards

• The Commonwealth Writers Prize

• The Costa Book Awards

• The Prix Goncourt

• Governor General’s Awards

• The Scotiabank Giller Prize

• The Miles Franklin Award

• Russian Booker Prize

• The Samuel Johnson Prize (non-fiction)

• German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis)

7 References[1] “The Booker’s Big Bang”. New Statesman. 9 October

2008. Retrieved 3 September 2009.

[2] Hoover, Bob (10 February 2008). "'Gathering' stormclears for prize winner Enright”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Retrieved 10 February 2008. In America, literary prizesare greeted with the same enthusiasm as a low Steelersdraft choice. Not so in the British Isles, where the $98,000Man Booker Fiction Prize can even push AmyWinehouseoff the front page – at least for a day. The atmospherearound the award approaches sports-championship pro-portions, with London bookies posting the ever-changingodds on the nominees. Then, in October when the winneris announced live on the BBC TV evening news, some-body always gets ticked off.

[3] “Man Booker Prize: a history of controversy, criticismand literary greats”. The Guardian. 18 October 2011.Retrieved 18 October 2011.

[4] “Booker Prize: legal information”. bookerprize.com. Re-trieved 3 September 2009.

[5] James Kidd, “A Brief History of The Man Booker Prize”.

[6] “The Lost Man Booker Prize announced”. booker-prize.com. Retrieved 31 January 2010.

[7] “Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro (Chatto & Windus,November)". The Guardian. 13 July 2012. Retrieved 13July 2012. As the only writer to sneak on to the Bookershortlist for a collection of short stories (with The BeggarMaid in 1980), Alice Munro easily deserves to end our listof the year’s best fiction.

[8] Yates, Emma (15 August 2001). “Booker Prize longlistannounced for first time”. The Guardian. Retrieved 15August 2001.

[9] Moss, Stephen (18 September 2001). “Is the Bookerfixed?". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 September 2001.

[10] White, Michael (25 November 1972). “Berger’s blackbread”. The Guardian. p. 11.

[11] “John Berger on the Booker Prize (1972)", YouTube.

[12] Speech by John Berger on accepting the Booker Prize forFiction at the Café Royal in London on 23 November1972.

[13] “Lord of the novel wins the Booker prize”. The Guardian.22 October 1980. p. 1.

[14] Bissett, Alan (27 July 2012). “The unnoticed bias of theBooker prize”. The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2012.

[15] “A novel way of striking a 12,000 Booker Prize bargain”,The Guardian, 14 October 1981, p. 14.

[16] “Novel way to run a lottery”. The Guardian. 5 September1994. p. 22.

[17] Glaister, Dan (14 October 1997). “Popularity pays off forRoy”. The Guardian.

[18] Ezard, John (11 October 2005). “Irish stylist springsBooker surprise”. The Guardian. Retrieved 11 October2005.

[19] Crown, Sarah (10 October 2005). “Banville scoops theBooker”. The Guardian. Retrieved 10 October 2005.

[20] Higgins, Charlotte (28 January 2009). “How AdamFoulds was a breath away from the Costa book of the yearaward”. The Guardian. Retrieved 28 January 2009.

[21] Will Gompertz, “Global expansion for Booker Prize”,BBC News, 18 September 2013.

[22] "'A surprise and a risk': Reaction to Booker Prize up-heaval”. BBC News. 18 September 2013. Retrieved 19September 2013.

4 9 EXTERNAL LINKS

[23] Mullan, John (12 July 2008). “Lives & letters, Whereare they now?". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 September2011.

[24] Pauli, Michelle (21 February 2008). “Best of the Booker”.The Guardian. Retrieved 3 September 2009.

[25] “Rushdie wins Best of Booker prize”. BBCNews. 10 July2008. Retrieved 3 September 2009.

[26] Melvern, Jack (20 May 2010). “J G Farrell wins Bookerprize for 1970, 30-year after his death”. The Times. Re-trieved 23 December 2010.

8 Further reading• Lee, Hermione (1981). The Booker Prize: Mattersof judgment. Times Literary Supplement, Reprinted22 October 2008

9 External links• Official website

• The Booker Prize Archive at Oxford Brookes Uni-versity

• A primer on the Man Booker Prize and critical re-view of literature

• Man Booker Prize 2013 Longlist announced 23 July2013, updated with Shortlist 10 September 2013

5

10 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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