Booker Prize Winners

With the Booker Prize for 2020 being announced this week, why not use it as a prompt to read some previous winners?

Founded with the aim of encouraging the wider reading of the very best in fiction, the Booker Prize has been awarded since 1969 for the best original novel written in the English language.  Originally the writer had to be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland but in 2014, in a controversial move, it was opened up to any work published in the United Kingdom and written in the English language.  

 In 1993 , the “Booker of Bookers” prize was awarded to Salman Rushdie for Midnight's Children as the best novel from the first 25 years of the prize.  Celebrating 50 years of the award, the Golden Booker was awarded in 2018 to Michael Ondaatje for The English Patient; this was selected by a vote from the public from a shortlist selected by a panel of judges. Interestingly The English Patient had only been a joint winner in its year, 1992.

Five authors have won it twice - J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, J. G. Farrell, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood.  Hilary Mantel and Iris Murdoch are the authors who have received most nominations with six apiece.

 Subscribe to one of our monthly plans – random or fiction – and you may receive a Booker novel one month.  So if you are looking to widen your reading, take a look and see the range of plans that we offer. 

 Or if you are after a specific book, please get in touch and we will see if we can help.