The Booker Prize for Fiction is arguably the most publicised award in the English language. There is a buzz of excitement in the press and literary circles right from the announcement of the longlist of about a dozen books to the declaration of the name of the Booker winner.
The winner of the Booker Prize 2023 was announced on 26 November – Prophet Song by Irish novelist Paul Lynch.
In 2019, the coveted award completed half a century of continued existence. The prize was first given in 1969. At that stage, novels originally written in English by authors from the Commonwealth countries, Ireland and South Africa were eligible. It was then sponsored by the Booker-McConnell Group.
Then, in 2002, the Man Group stepped in as the sponsor, and the prize came to be known as the Man Booker. The Booker Prize Foundation remained the managing body.
From 2014 on, novels written in English in any part of the world are being considered. In 2019, the Crankstart Foundation became the new sponsor, and the reward was renamed the Booker Prize for Fiction.
People interested in the history of the Booker Prize can take a look at the foundation’s archives in the Oxford Brookes University library. Initially, the prize money was 21,000 pounds; in 2002, it was raised to 50,000 pounds.
Over the years, this competition has thrown up quite a few interesting winners. The first ever victor was Paul Newby for Something to Answer For.
A few have won the title twice. They are Peter Kerry, J.M. Coetzee, J.G. Farrell (retrospectively), and Hilary Mantel. Coetzee went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. However, the most perfect Booker winner to date, possibly, is Salman Rushdie’s Midnights Children.
For this work, Rushdie won the Booker in 1981. Later, the book was rated the best among the Booker winners (the Booker of Bookers) when an assessment was made to commemorate the silver jubilee of the award.
In a rather extraordinary occurrence, it got the honour once again when the best of the Booker winners was selected to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker prize (Best of Bookers). In 2018, Michael Ondaatje was awarded the Golden Jubilee Booker for The English Patient, the Booker winner of 1992. Alongside J.M. Coetzee, some distinguished authors went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature after securing the Booker Prize. They are V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, and Kazuo Ishiguro. As India is a member of the British Commonwealth, Indian authors have been competing for the prize from the beginning. So far, four authors with Indian connections have been successful, apart from Salman Rushdie.
They are Ruth P. Jhabvala, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga. Anita Desai, Kiran’s mother, was shortlisted a remarkable four times. Rohinton Mistry made it to the short list three times.
He also won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. But a fellow Commonwealth Prize winner, Vikram Seth, with his tomes – A Suitable Boy and An Equal Music, failed to make any impression here. An Indian, Chetna Maroo, was on this year’s shortlist too. The Bookerwinning titles have covered many interesting topics. Historical novels such as The Siege of Krishnapur (based on the Indian Rebellion of 1857), The Ghost Road, Midnight’s Children, Wolf Hall, and Bring Up The Bodies, have bagged the prize a number of times.
The Ghost Road (winner 1995), the last volume of the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker, highlights the futility of war. This novel, set in the background of the First World War, includes real-life poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon as characters. However, the Booker jury rejected Salman Rushdie’s magically real historical novel The Enchantress of Florence as ‘hasty’ and ‘scrappy’ in 2008.
Last year’s winner, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilake of Sri Lanka, is a remarkable work. It was previously published with different titles, like Devil Dance and Chats with the Dead.
Later, it was edited to suit Western readers’ tastes. The book is a surreal account of the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil outfit LTTE.
It is full of dark humour and political satire. Naturally, some Booker-winning titles with interesting material have been converted into successful movies, such as the epic Schindler’s List, the exotic The Life of Pi, the charming Remains of the Day, the enchanting Oscar and Lucinda, and the moving The English Patient. In 2014, the scope of the prize was expanded to include all authors writing originally in English and publishing in the UK.
Unofficially, the motive of this move was to bring the USA within the ambit of Booker. Significantly, the first beneficiary of this decision was American Paul Beatty, who won in 2016, followed by fellow countryman George Saunders in 2017. Naturally, this expansive move was criticised by some British publishers.
The Booker authorities had extended their horizons earlier in 2004 by inaugurating the biannual Booker International Prize. This award was open to any author in the world whose work was available in English.
The author was rewarded for his lifetime achievement, not for a specific book. The first recipient was Ismail Kadare of Albania.
In 2016, the format of the competition was changed. From then on, a writer is awarded every year for a specific book translated into English. The translator also shares the 50,000 pounds prize. The recipient in 2023 is Georgi Gospodinov from Bulgaria, who won the prize for his Time Shelter. Indian authors like Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh and UR Ananthamurthy made it to the shortlist. At last, Geetanjali Shree won the coveted prize in 2022 for Tomb of Sand. Interestingly, authors shortlisted for the 2022 prize included Jon Fosse from Norway, the Nobel laureate for Literature in 2023.
Naturally, the conferring of such a high-profile award has aroused numerous controversies. Over the years, the decisions of the judges have been severely criticised and ridiculed. In 1969, one of the most influential books in the contemporary world, John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, was published.
It is rated as one of the post-modern futuristic classics. Quite surprisingly, the work failed to make it even to the shortlist of the 1969 inaugural Booker Prize. Years later, an opinion poll conducted among the readers of The Times in London concluded that this publication should have been the first winner of the Booker.
Later, one of the judges termed James Kelman’s win in 1994 for How Late It Was, How Late as ‘disgrace’, while The Independent condemned John Banville’s triumph for The Sea in 2005 as the ‘most perverse decision’. Still, we hope the Booker Prize will continue to throw up unsung but deserving winners in the coming years. The writer is assistant professor of History, Vidyasagar College for Women, Kolkata.