Booker Prize winners and history

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The Booker Prize – is one of the most important annual events in the literary world. It has been awarded since 1969 to the best English-language works from the Commonwe alth, Ireland and Zimbabwe. However, this rule existed until 2013.

In 2014, the award for the first time refused to be tied to geography. For one of the most prestigious awards in the world, in fact, an entire era has ended. Therefore, it is quite possible to sum up the "results" of this era, before the 2014 Booker Prize erased all national signs.

History

The Booker Prize for Literature was organized and first awarded in 1969. The initiator and author of the idea of the award was an English businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Harris Kane.

His Booker Group corporation is the most prominent player in the British service sector, earning millions of pounds. She became the sponsor of the literary award, which was named after her.

The first prize, in addition to prestige, carried the amount of five thousand pounds. In the future, the monetary reward went on increasing -ten, fifteen and twenty thousand.

In 2002, another business giant joined the sponsorship of the Booker Prize, namely the Man Group (financial services). This strengthened her prestige and made it possible to significantly increase the amount of money awarded - up to fifty thousand pounds sterling. Since then, the official title of the award has been The Man Booker Prize.

As mentioned above, since 2014 the event has been moving beyond the borders of the former colonies of Britain and is open to writers of any nationality. There was only one condition - the book had to be published in English at least once.

Determination of the winner

Finding among the multifaceted and versatile modern literature something unequivocally the best is definitely quite difficult. The process of awarding the Booker Prize is divided into several stages.

The first includes a meeting of a committee of literary critics, publishers, agents and librarians; the presence of representatives of both companies sponsoring the award is also required. These people approve a jury of five people (also prominent figures in the literary field) and a list of books, for which a maximum of one hundred novels.

The jury draws up the so-called "long list" (twenty-five works) within a month, and then the "short list" (six). From among the six best novels, future winners of the Booker Prize for Literature are selected.

Of course, being among the best in both lists is already prestigious and says a lot about the quality of the author's work.

First Winner

For the first time Bookerthe prize was presented to Percy Howard Newby, a teacher from Cairo.

His novel "You'll have to answer for this" tells the story of a Briton named Townrow who came to Egypt on personal business.

However, he got to the country of the pyramids at the wrong time, namely during the Suez crisis, when England and France could not forgive Egypt for the nationalization of the Suez Canal and unleashed a war. Townrow faces numerous problems, the hatred of local residents. As an Englishman, he gets paid for all the politics of the former British Empire.

It is the fault of the common man in the colonial past of his country that is the main issue of the novel. For his relevance and sharp style that soaked the book, Newby received an award.

J. M. Coetzee

In 1999, South African linguist and writer John Maxwell Coetzee becomes the first person to receive such a prestigious award twice. Prior to him, Booker Prize winners had never been honored with double honors, but were often long- or short-listed over the years.

The Coetzee received his first prize in 1983, when his highly social novel The Life and Times of Michael K. was published. In it, a young man with an ailing mother tries to find shelter from hostilities on a farm by escaping from Cape Town. The main theme of the story is the life of a person in society, his responsibility to him, as well as the responsibility of society to the individual. Coetzee asks where the personal endsthe space of the human soul and its "social significance" begins. It goes without saying that the theme of the character's encounter with the globalization of the world could not have been overlooked by the Booker Prize committee; especially at the end of the 20th century.

The second award the South African writer earned for the novel "Infamy". Later, the work was filmed with John Malkovich in the title role. The novel reveals to us the story of a professor expelled from the university for having a sexual relationship with a “colored” student of a professor who leaves for a farm with his daughter. After many years of government policy of separating "whites" and "blacks", South Africa is going through difficult times. The main character has to find out - are there so many differences between the indigenous people and the descendants of the colonists?

The acute topic, literally standing on the blades of a knife, in the book rushed from extreme to extreme, inviting the reader to see all the problems of racial relations in South Africa: from hatred of all the "black man" to the complete realization that all people, despite it, despite skin color, equal.

In 2003, Coetzee also received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Peter Carey

The second person to be twice visited by the Booker Prize was Australian Peter Carrie. He was able to win her a second time in 2002.

He won his first award in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda, about a wild bet between a priest and a glass factory owner. After all, if Oscar manages to translate intact and install a glass church in Australia, then he will receive everythingLucinda's condition. What for? In order to give it to the poor and the disadvantaged, or in order to lower them at the card table? The novel was filmed in 1997.

The next time Carrie makes the Booker Prize list is with his novel True History of the Kelly Gang, in which he tries to bring the story of a controversial character in Australian folklore to the mainstream reader. After all, historians are still arguing - who was the legendary Ned Kelly, who became famous as a "noble robber" and the owner of stylish leather armor - a simple killer or a fighter against the British crown? In her novel, Carrie tries to give an answer and comes up with a compromise version: Ned Kelly was both. Starting as a simple bandit, he increasingly noticed the suffering of Australians under the yoke of Her Majesty's police, until he finally declared personal war on the British Empire.

Eleanor Catton

The 2013 Booker Prize was awarded to New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton. It is noteworthy that she set two records related to this award at once.

Firstly, Catton became the youngest of all the winners of the award. At the time of the presentation, she was "only" twenty-eight. Secondly, her novel The Luminaries remains the longest work (832 pages) to win this award to date.

The main character, W alter Moody, arrives in New Zealand during the reign of the British Queen Victoria. It was then that the gold rush began there, and a smallthe island was remembered by seekers of easy money. However, W alter will not have to deal with gold mines at all - he is drawn into the clarification of the circumstances of a series of mysterious and mystical murders that frightened all the inhabitants of New Zealand.

The main theme for Catton's creative search was the question of excitement, greed and the need for money. The writer seems to slyly wink at us from the pages of the book, where there are people who are ready to do anything for the sake of we alth, success - any sins are not a crime for them if it leads them to their cherished goal. “Well, have we changed a lot here?” asks Eleanor Catton.

Richard Flanagan

"Narrow Road to the Far North" was written by author Richard Flanagan for twelve years, and as a result, the Booker Prize 2014 went to him.

The novel tells about a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, where prisoners were forced to build one of the most bloodthirsty railways from Thailand to Burma. The creation of this path claimed the lives of hundreds of captives, not all of them returned home.

The book first immerses us in the terrible world of camp horror, and then gives us the opportunity to see what happened to those who survived; how they end their journey in this world very soon anyway - most often by suicide. How guards hide from justice.

However, in all this, Flanagan is trying to find at least something, if not good, then at least something that makes you live. This book is about camaraderie, empathy, and grief that brings people together.

Branches

Through effortsMichael Harris Cain, the Booker Prize extended to other countries. Only three so-called "branches" saw the light of day, as a result of the work carried out by the Booker Group. The International Booker Prize has been awarded every two years since 2005. The Asian Booker Prize has also appeared since 2007.

And since 1992 there has also been a "Russian Booker" as Kane's desire to help a country once filled with great writers.

The question of the relevance of these branches and their future activities after the change of conditions for the winners remains open.

Results

It is difficult to imagine what the consequences of changing the conditions for receiving the award will be, and what the Booker Prize will turn into. The winners have always been closely and invariably connected with Britain, with its themes and topical issues. The history of the relationship of the British Empire with the colonies also rose among them more than once.

However, change is always for the better. The Booker Prize 2014 shows this - the winners, regardless of the setting, are talking about the same thing. About the importance of human relations, about the fact that in any case one must remain a person. And preferably, a person with high moral character. This is what real literature should show, no matter what country it was born in.