The Man Booker Archives: Award Winners from 1969-2015
When it began in 1969, the aim of the Man Booker Prize was to increase readership of quality fiction by celebrating and promoting the best books of the year. In its nearly 50-year history, the prize has become one of the most prestigious in the book world. Its legion of winning books - 48 to date - are some of the industry's best-selling novels and are well on their way to becoming classics. The archives are peppered with familiar names like Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje and Kingsley Amis. Big hitters Peter Carey,Hilary Mantel and J.M. Coetzee have multiple Bookers to their names.
The annual £50,000 prize (about $75,000 USD) is granted to the best novel originally written in English and published in the UK in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of the author. Until 2013, only writers from Commonwealth countries were eligible to win the British prize. The winner is selected by a rotating panel of judges who pare a long list of about a dozen down to six, then one. It's not an easy task - twice, in 1992 and 1974, the judges declared a draw and selected two winners.
Author Graham Swift, winner of the 1996 Booker for Last Orders, said, "Prizes don't make writers and writers don't write to win prizes, but in the near-glut of literary awards now on offer, the Booker remains special. It's the one which, if we're completely honest, we most covet."
Explore the 49 winning books since the prize's inaugural year in 1969. Autographed award-winners are aplenty on AbeBooks - all the way from P.H. Newby to Marlon James.
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