Take a Booker to the Beach

By Judy Buswick  |  Would fiction from the list of Booker Prize winners be good summer reading for Lexingtonians? And who won this year’s award? My goal was to find the answers.

The prestigious Booker Prize for writers of English-language fiction is given by a different judging panel each year to either an established author or a first-time novelist chosen as the writer of the year’s best-fiction title in the British Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Begun in 1969, the prize was originally dubbed the Booker-McConnell Prize, after its sponsoring company, but the title was commonly shortened to “the Booker Prize” or just “the Booker.” Though prize money was originally £21,000 (or $33,628 in today’s currency), in 2002 the administration of the prize transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation, an independent charity, when the Man Group investment firm joined in sponsoring the award.  Renaming it “the Man Booker Prize for Fiction,” the foundation increased the annual award to £50,000 (or $80,067) with literary excellence still its sole focus. Needless to say, writers cherish this award, since the winners are typically assured international fame and success. Even those merely nominated for the Booker receive a certain distinction and respect in the book trade for being considered for this most important literary prize in the English-speaking world.

The Booker Prize Foundation appoints an advisory committee of “an author, two publishers, a literary agent, a bookseller, a librarian, and a chairperson.” This committee then selects a judging panel “from amongst leading literary critics, writers, academics and notable public figures” to review submissions. From the following abbreviated list of winners, Lexington readers may find an author or title yet to be read, or for viewing on DVD :

South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer won the Booker in 1974 for “The Conservationist,” a novel exploring apartheid through the Zulu culture and a wealthy white South African farmer buries an unidentified corpse found on his property and seeks to conserve peace and apartheid. Gordimer also won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Iris Murdoch of Ireland won the 1978 Booker for her nineteenth novel “The Sea, the Sea,” which recounts an aging playwright’s obsession with a romance from his youth, as he begins to write his memoir. Egotism and selfishness abound.

In 1981 India’s Salman Rushdie won for his novel of historical fiction Midnight’s Children about India’s transition to independence from British colonialism. When the Booker had its 40th Anniversary in 2008, an award was created as “The Best of the Booker;” Rushdie’s “Midnight Children” won this unique award. Then in 1993, another special award was created as “The Booker of Bookers Prize” for the best novel to win in the first twenty-five years of the list. This same Rushdie novel won yet again.

Australia’s Thomas Keneally won in 1982 for Schindler’s Ark about a German businessman who saved thousands of Polish Jews during the Holocaust by putting them to work in his factory. The movie version directed by Steven Spielberg was dubbed “Schindler’s List,” as was the US edition of the book. Later it was re-issued under that name in the Commonwealth countries.  Actors Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, and Caroline Goodall appeared in the film which won seven Academy Awards.

Britain’s Anita Brookner won for Hotel du Lac in 1984, telling of observations made by a romance novelist who goes to Lake Geneva to recuperate from lost love. The book was made into an award winning BBC TV play.

1985 was a good year for New Zealand’s Keri Hulme who had trouble finding a publisher but then won the Booker for her first novel The Bone People, an unusual love story filled with violence and fear that mixes Maori myth with Biblical characters. Three fiercely unique people, one an autistic orphan, conjure up the heritage and landscape of New Zealand as their lives are figuratively stripped to the bone.

Another winning novel made into a movie was the 1988 Booker Oscar and Lucinda by Australia’s Peter Carey. A young Anglican priest and an Australian heiress, both with gambling addictions, set out to deliver a glass church to an outback community. Ralph Finnes and Cate Blanchette played the lead roles. The book was considered (or shortlisted) for The Best of the Booker in 2008.

Originally from Japan but also a British citizen, Kazuo Ishiguro won in 1989 for his historical novel titled “The Remains of the Day,” recounting the loyalty and near love-affair of an butler in an upper class household in pre-World War II England. The film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, and Huge Grant was nominated for eight Academy Awards.   

Jumping a few years to 2000, we find Canada’s Margaret Atwood on the list for “The Blind Assassin,” a complex story of two sisters spanning the twentieth century. A story-within-the-story unfolds and leaves the reader to learn which sister actually wrote of an extramarital affair.

Another Canadian and a first time author, Yann Martel won in 2002 for “Life of Pi,” a fantasy adventure novel depicting the endurance of an Indian boy’s 227-day sea voyage in a small boat with a Bengal tiger.

 Kiran Desai from India won the 2006 prize for her novel set in an Indian mountain village along the Nepal border, The Inheritance of Loss. Both the grandfather Judge educated in England and his teenage granddaughter live under the cloud of multiculturalism and the threat of political terrorism.

 Hilary Mantel from Britain won the 2009 award for Wolf Hall depicting the tumultuous court of King Henry VIII through the eyes of the low-born Thomas Cromwell.  The story mixes real history and descriptive fiction.

In case you found yourself grumbling that no American authors were on the Booker list, I have good news to share. Introduced only in the last seven years, The Man Booker International Prize has been established to highlight “one writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. In seeking out literary excellence the judges consider a writer’s body of work rather than a single novel.” A prize of £60,000 ($98,378) “is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language,” explains a Booker Foundation judge. There is no nationality requirement.

In 2005 the first Man Booker International Prize went to Albanian writer Ismail Kadare (several times nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Literature), next to Nigeran writer Chinua Achebe in 2007 (Now at Brown University, he is best known for his novel Things Fall Apart.), and in 2009 to Canadian Alice Munro (a short-story writer frequently on the Nobel Prize list).

Then, in May 2011 an American writer born in New Jersey who has stimulated and provoked readers for more than 50 years was honored with the Prize. Philip Roth received the Man Booker International Prize for his body of work, including Portnoy’s Complaint (1959), a Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997) part of a trilogy, and The Human Stain (2000). The Chair of the Booker judging panel Rick Gekoski wrote that Roth “has not only recast our idea of Jewish identity, but has also reanimated fiction.”

Roth’s most recent, short novel “Nemesis” (2010) is set in 1944 during a polio epidemic which ravages a Newark community, where twenty-three year old Bucky is a kind-hearted playground director but plagued by guilt. He struggles against the disease, his personal safety, and his ineligibility for the military — played against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Gekoski noted that Nemesis is “as fresh, memorable, and alive with feeling as anything [Roth] has written.” That said, Carmen Callil withdrew as one of the three judges, in protest over Roth as the 2011 winner.    

Booker Prize titles represent quality writing; and as Ion Trewin, Administrator of the Man Booker Prizes, has explained, “Whether you judge the prize by numbers of books sold, the number of films it has helped generate or the way it has opened our eyes to a range and quality of writing that might otherwise have been ignored,” the aim of the Bookers has been met.

But we still do not know who won this year’s Man Booker Prize. Those authors under consideration will be announced on September 6, 2011, and the winner will be named on October 16th. You may want to check the Man Booker Website to see the shortlist and make your own guess before the announcement.

Though summer reading is often “fluff,” taking a Booker title along for company may make for invigorating reading — either as an ebook or paper copy. See how many Booker Prize winners you may have already read or see what’s available electronically by visiting:  http://www.book-review-circle.com/Book-Review-Booker-Prize-Winning-Novels.html .

 

 

A non-fiction writer, Judy Buswick has never been in contention for a Booker!  She is the author of “Slate of Hand: Stone for Fine Art and Folk Art” (Trafford Publishing, 2007) and is working on a biography of Massachusetts quilter Sally Palmer Field. Contact her at jt.buswick@verizon.net.