February 2010 |
Booker Prize Redemption
For any collectors of Booker Prize winners out there, you will soon have a new gap to fill in your collection. Yesterday, the Booker Prize committee announced a long-list for a Lost Booker prize award. The Lost Booker will compensate for a 1971 rule change which left a number of important 1970 publications out of the running. Previous to 1971, the Booker prize was awarded retrospectively to a book published in the previous year. In 1971 the rules shifted and the Booker began to be awarded to a book published in the same year. (These rules still stand). The rule change created a multi-month gap that left a number of 1970 publications out in the cold.
To compensate for this loss, the Booker Prize Foundation announced the creation of a special Lost Man Booker Prize Award and drew up a long-list of 22 novels published in 1970 that missed previous consideration. The list includes Patrick O'Brien's "Master and Commander," Irish Murdoch's "A Fairly Honorable Defeat," Shiva Naipaul's "Fireflies," and Ruth Rendell's "A Guilty Thing Surprised." The short-list will be announced in March, at which point the public can vote for their favorite on the Booker Prize website. The winner will be announced in May.
Read a longer article about this new award from the Guardian here.
