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Young World
It’s the Booker
PANKAJA SRINIVASAN
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The prize is awarded to the best full length novel of the year.
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October 16. And the winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2007, is Anne Enright. She wins it for her novel The Gathering. The Man Booker Prize is awarded to the best full length novel of the year. Only a novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland is eligible for the award. And, the winner receives £ 50,000. A company called Booker McConnell instituted the prize in 1968 which came to be known as “the Booker”. When
an investment company, Man Group, became the title sponsor, the prize came to be known as the Man Booker. The first Booker Prize was won in 1969 by P.H. Newby for his book, Something to Answer For.
The Indians
Two Indian nationals, Arundhati Roy won the prize for God of Small Things in 1997, and Kiran Desai won it for The Inheritance of Loss last year.
V.S. Naipaul of Indian descent won it in 1971 for In a Free State, and 10 years later in 1981, Salman Rushdie was awarded the prize for Midnight’s Children. Indra Sinha of India was in the shortlist this year.
So, who decides who should win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction? A committee is formed. It is made up of an author, two publishers, a literary agent, a bookseller, a librarian and a chairperson.
These people in turn select a panel that is made up of writers, critics, academics and public figures. This year the judges were Howard Davies (Director London School of Economics), Wendy Cope (Poet), Giles Foden (journalist and the author of the award winning The Last King of Scotland, Ruth Scurr, biographer and critic, and Imogen Stubbs, actor.
This year 100 books were submitted for consideration for the prize, of which six were short listed.
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There is also something called the Man Booker International Prize once every two years. This seeks to recognise a living author who has contributed significantly to world literature and to highlight the author’s continuing creativity and development on a global scale.
Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare was the first to win the International Booker Prize in 2005. African writer Chinua Achebe is the winner for 2007. The prize is worth £ 60,000.
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