Booker Prize

The Booker Prize (previously known as the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize) is one of the world's most prestigious literary awards for fiction written in English. Conceived in 1968 by Tom Maschler and Graham C. Greene, the award has been given annually since 1969 to a work of long-form fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 1 of the previous year and September 30 of the award year. The prize has been sponsored by Crankstart since 2019.

The Booker Prize is comparable to the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize. The winner achieves worldwide fame and a boost in book sales. The impressive list of award winners includes literary heavyweights Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and Hilary Mantel.

Previously, only writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland, and Zimbabwe were eligible to receive the Booker Prize. In a controversial move, the field was expanded in 2014 to include authors writing in English from around the world, including the United States.

The Booker Prize continues to carry weight across literature and other artistic mediums. Several novels that have won the award, including Schindler's Ark, The English Patient, and Life of Pi, have been adapted into critically acclaimed films.

Background

The Booker Prize seeks to honor the year's best novel written in English. The award is highly celebrated in Great Britain and accompanied by much fanfare.

A panel of five judges, made up of writers, critics, and scholars, determines the nominees based on submissions from publishers. There are usually around 150 submissions, all of which are read by the judges. Judges can also call in any book they consider worthy of the prize that has not been submitted.

Nominated writers are named to a long list of about twelve or thirteen authors, then whittled down to a short list of about six. The winner is announced in October, on the same day the judges decide.

The Booker Prize is Britain's second-oldest fiction prize. Booker McConnell Ltd., an international food corporation that also had a books division, established the award in 1968. To show appreciation for its writers, the company wanted to establish a new fiction award that would honor an author from the Commonwealth. Called the Booker Prize for Fiction, the inaugural award was presented in 1969 to P. H. Newby for the novel Something to Answer For.

The name of the award was changed to the Man Booker Prize in 2002 when the Man Group Ltd., an investment management firm, provided sponsorship. In 2019, the Man Group stopped sponsoring the prize, and the award became known as the Booker Prize. That year the charitable foundation Crankstart took over sponsorship of the award. The nonprofit Booker Prize Foundation oversees responsibility for the award.

The first prize came with a purse of £5,000, which increased to £10,000 by 1978, and £50,000 by 2002. Additionally, each author named to the Booker Prize shortlist receives £2,500 and

Since its creation, the award has grown in stature, sometimes through controversy. In 1972, British writer John Berger won the prize for his novel G. However, the author denounced the award, protesting the Booker McConnell company's origins involving slavery in the Caribbean. Making a statement, Berger donated half of his £5,000 prize to the Black Panthers.

In 1980, the prize came down to a heated showdown between two British authors: William Golding, who was nominated for Rites of Passage, and Anthony Burgess, author of Earthly Powers. Burgess claimed he would not attend the ceremony unless he received assurance the award was his. That was not to be, and Golding emerged the winner.

In 1981, British Indian author Salman Rushdie's win for Midnight's Children cemented the Booker Prize as an illustrious honor.

Overview

The Booker Prize holds an esteemed place in the literary world. Writers of varying experience have won the award, from first-time authors to established veterans. Winners have gone onto successful careers, achieving international renown. However, expanding eligibility to American writers sparked fears the award may move away from its roots.

After his win for Midnight's Children, Rushdie became one of the most highly regarded authors in modern literature. Among all the novels to receive the Booker Prize, Midnight's Children has been chosen as the ultimate "Booker of Bookers" twice—for the award's 25th anniversary in 1993 and its 40th anniversary in 2008.

Prolific Canadian writer Margaret Atwood was awarded the Booker Prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin. Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale, which was a nominee for the Booker Prize in 1986, was turned into an Emmy Award–winning television series in 2017. Atwood was awarded a second Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale.

The Booker Prize is influential in the book trade, providing a significant bump in book sales for winners and nominees. Writers benefit from the publicity.

British writer Hilary Mantel was the first woman to win the award twice. She claimed the prize in 2009 for Wolf Hall and in 2012 for its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. After she won for Bring Up the Bodies, sales of the book jumped from 1,846 to 10,605 copies within a week.

The 2014 decision to expand the field for the Booker Prize was controversial. As the prize honors works of fiction written in English, some writers have said that opening eligibility to American novelists was long overdue. Meanwhile, others have questioned if doing so goes against the spirit of recognizing homegrown writers from the Commonwealth.

Some worried allowing American writers into the field could pave the way for them to dominate the award. In 2016, Paul Beatty became the first American to claim the Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. The following year, American writer George Saunders won the prize for Lincoln in the Bardo. In 2018, thirty publishers asked the prize organizers to limit eligibility to Commonwealth, Irish, and Zimbabwean writers out of concern that the prize had become less global rather than more global because they felt that US writers had come to dominate the prize.

The judges of the 2019 Booker Prize made headlines after announcing Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo as the co-recipients of that year’s award, which opposed an existing stipulation in the rules of the prize that forbade more than one winner in any given year. (The Booker Prize was last shared in 1992, which prompted the rule change.) In sharing the award, Atwood became the oldest winner of the prize, while Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the prize.

The novels that have won the Booker Prize have thrived in other mediums, including film and television.

Australian writer Thomas Keneally's novel Schindler's Ark, which won the prize in 1982, was made into the critically and commercially successful film Schindler's List in 1992. The movie won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The English Patient, written by Canadian Sri Lankan novelist Michael Ondaatje, won the Booker Prize in 1992. The 1996 film adaptation won Best Picture, one of its nine Academy Awards. Canadian writer Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which claimed the prize in 2002, was turned into a film in 2012, winning four Academy Awards.

On television, a limited series was based on Mantel's award-winning books Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. The 2015 series, shown on the BBC in Great Britain and on PBS's Masterpiece Theater in the United States, garnered praise.

Since its inception, the Booker Prize serves as a benchmark for the best novels in the English-speaking world. The award's influence extends to the book trade and the mediums of film and television.

Bibliography

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"Booker Prize: Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo Share Award." BBC, 15 Oct. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50014906. Accessed 20 Jan. 2023.

"Booker Prize Facts and Figures." The Booker Prizes, 1 Aug. 2023, thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/booker-prize-facts-and-figures. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Cain, Sian. "Publishers Call on Man Booker Prize to Drop American Authors." The Guardian, 2 Feb. 2018, www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/publishers-call-on-man-booker-prize-to-drop-american-authors. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Flood, Alison. "Man Booker Prize 2017 Longlist Led by Arundhati Roy's Return to Fiction." The Guardian, 26 July 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/27/man-booker-prize-2017-longlist-led-by-arundhati-roy-return-to-fiction. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.

"Global Expansion for Booker Prize." BBC, 18 Sept. 2013, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-24145501. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.

Stoddard, Katy. "Man Booker Prize: A History of Controversy, Criticism and Literary Greats." The Guardian, 14 Oct. 2014, www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/oct/18/booker-prize-history-controversy-criticism. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.

Strongman, Luke. The Booker Prize and the Legacy of Empire. Rodopi, 2002.

Sulcas, Roslyn. "'Wolf Hall,' a Six-Part TV Series, Tackles Hilary Mantel's Books." The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/arts/television/wolf-hall-a-six-part-tv-series-tackles-hilary-mantels-books.html. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.

Sutherland, John. "The Booker's Big Bang." New Statesman, 9 Oct. 2008, www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/10/booker-prize-british-literary. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.