Booker Prize Books

Last updated February 5, 2024

The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades. It is a prize that transforms the winner’s career. The winner receives £50,000 as well as the £2,500 awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors. Both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a global readership and can expect a dramatic increase in book sales.

Founded in the UK in 1969, it initially rewarded Commonwealth writers and now spans the globe: it is open to anyone regardless of origin. Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of our judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The winning book is a work that not only speaks to our current times, but also one that will endure and join the pantheon of great literature.

The Prize was started by the conglomerate Booker, McConnell Ltd and has a fascinating history. When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain “Booker” as part of the official title of the prize. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £5,000. It doubled in 1978 to £10,000 and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world’s richest literary prizes. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.

Resources about the Prize

• Booker Prize Home
• Wikipedia entry on the Booker Prize
• Full list of Booker Prize winners, shortlisted and longlisted books / Booker Prize site
• List of winners and nominated authors of the Booker Prize / Wikipedia
• 12 of the best page-turners from the Booker Library / Booker Prize site

Nominees and winners I have read

I haven’t read many of the books yet but I am setting myself a goal to read more of the Booker Prize nominees and winners in 2024. I will update this list as I complete a book.

• Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998 winner) – completed Feb. 4, 2024. This seemed a very insubstantial book to win this prize, certainly not one of McEwan’s top books. I found it trite and the ending contrived and silly. The writing was beautiful, as always, but the characters were not at all sympathetic and the life observations were few and far between. Looking at the other shortlisted books for that year, perhaps this was the best of the bunch. I wonder if it was awarded in recognition of his body of work, rather than this particular work.
• Small World by David Lodge (1984 shortlist)

• Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986 shortlist)
• What’s Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies (1986 shortlist)
• Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood (1989 shortlist)
• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996 shortlist)

• Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001 shortlist)
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002 winner)

• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003 shortlist)
• Saturday by Ian McEwan (2005 longlist)
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (2007 shortlist)

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