The Booker Prize is a prestigious literary award given annually to the best English-language work by a British or Irish Commonwealth writer. The winner receives £50,000, and the shortlisted authors receive £2,500. The prize was established in 1968 and has since expanded to include American writers.
The Man Booker Prize, commonly known as the Booker Prize, is a literary prize which is awarded annually to an English-language literary work by an Irish or British Commonwealth writer that is determined to be the best work of the year. It is an extremely prestigious honor to win the Booker Prize. The prize winner also receives £50,000, or approximately $100,000 US dollars.
The Booker Prize was established in 1968, when publisher Tom Maschler approached the Booker Brothers publishing house about establishing a literary prize. As a result of the meeting, the Booker Prize for Fiction was established and has been awarded annually since. Since that time, the Booker family has established two other literary prizes: the Booker Russian Novel Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing.
To choose the books that will be considered for the Booker Prize, publishers in the UK are allowed to submit two novels a year for consideration by the judges and can submit five other book names. Of all the books and titles proposed, the Booker Prize jury will create a “longlist” of between eight and twelve books, after narrowing down the list. Booker Prize judges are required to read all books that have been submitted for consideration. Booker Prize judges are generally acclaimed authors; judges for the 2007 Booker Prize included writers Nadine Gordimer and Colm Toibin.
After this point, each judge will choose the novel they think is best from the selection. These books will become the “nominee shortlist” and the authors will receive £2,500, or approximately $5,000 US dollars. Being shortlisted for a Booker Prize is a prestigious honor in and of itself.
Having a novel nominated as a Booker Prize winner can be a great promotion for an author. The book gets instant respect and a greater readership; many books that received the Booker Prize were later made into films as well. Some recent Booker Prize winners are Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.
The Booker Prize has only recently begun accepting American writers as award nominees; until recently, it was only open to Great Britain and Commonwealth members, such as Australia and Canada. Especially now that the scope of the award has been expanded, it could be one of the most significant literary awards in the world.
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