Early in September I march down to my local bookshop, reusable cotton tote in hand, to buy every book shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This ritual is accompanied by several weeks of feverish reading sequestered [1] in various libraries and coffee shops around my city, in anticipation of the winner being announced. I regret to inform you, reader, that I have never once correctly guessed the winner, but each shortlisted book I have read has proven to be truly excellent, which is why I have become something of a Booker fanatic. In the modern age of YouTube and TikTok book reviewers, as well as sites such as Goodreads that allow every reader to post reviews and star ratings, some see literary prizes as a relic from the snooty and elitist past of the literary establishment. This bookworm, however, seeks to champion the merits of the Booker Prize, and encourage you to use it to find your next read.
Although it has had various names since the prize was founded in 1969, the Booker is a literary prize awarded to fiction published in the English language by writers from within the commonwealth. It has a sister prize, the International Booker, whose board of judges choose the best work in translation from all over the world. Past winners of the Booker include John Berger, J.M. Coetzee, and Margaret Atwood. Each year a panel of judges, comprised of literary giants from all genders, races, and creeds, first puts forth a ‘longlist’, then a shortlist [2], of the best books of the year, from which a winner is ultimately announced. The winner is awarded £50,000 in prize money, as well as the title of ‘Booker Prize winner’ which carries considerable weight and prestige within the literary sphere.
The very concept that a ‘number one book’ can be decided upon by a group of literary insiders is a controversial one. On the face of it, we award prizes for all manner of things in the UK, such as for racing a giant cheese down a hill (Google: Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling), for growing the largest turnip at the village fête (UK National Giant Vegetables Championship), and for closely resembling your pet dog (Country Living Magazine). What is so different about awarding writers for literary excellence? Differing opinions are inevitable, and the coming-together of minds to select a single title as the champion is fraught with arguments and controversies. At no other time of the year are people fighting tooth and nail to defend a book or rip another to shreds. It sparks a public discourse like no other, and I follow along with rapt attention year after year.
My defence of the Booker against its critics is threefold. Firstly, the Booker has long championed women, awarding a prize to Bernice Rubens in its second year, all the way back in 1970, and many more women since. As you can imagine, this is unfortunately not the norm when it comes to literary awards (or, in fact, awards of most kinds). The Nobel Prize for Literature, for example, has been awarded to 15 women (and 101 men) since its inception. The Booker counts 18 women (and 35 men) among its past winners. The Booker has trailblazed [3] not only in regards to gender equality; both the panels and the winners feature writers from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds. This should not be considered exceptional, but sadly, it is.
The second commendable [4] feature of the Booker is arguably the most relevant point: the books that make it onto the shortlist, and by extension the winner too, are excellent. Some of my favorites include Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, from 2022’s list, which tells the story of an unnamed narrator in the form of her notebook entries as she investigates a disgraced psychotherapist who she suspects of involvement in her sister’s untimely death. Another favorite is DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little, which won the 2003 Booker prize, a black comedy about the aftermath of a school shooting. The previously mentioned South African author J.M. Coetzee has won the Booker twice, and his second winning novel Disgrace is a masterclass in fiction, and a must-read for fellow lovers of an unreliable narrator.
Lastly, as previously mentioned, the prize money for the Booker is £50,000, making it one of the most lucrative [5] prizes in fiction. Besides the prize money, sales are boosted for the shortlisted novels, and they often sell out and reprints are expedited by publishing houses. It is incredibly difficult to become a professional writer, and most need to take on odd jobs to make enough money to get by. The cash injection that a Booker nomination brings can be life changing for an unknown author. Take DBC Pierre, who won with his debut novel and had the course of his career permanently altered. 2020’s winner, Scottish writer Douglas Stuart, grew up in a working-class area of Glasgow and won with his first novel Shuggie Bain, inspired by his childhood raised by an alcoholic mother before her addiction-related death when he was just sixteen years old. In an interview with the Duchess of Cornwall, he stated that the Booker prize had ‘transformed’ his life.
The Booker Prize is nothing if not controversial, and one of the most divisive [6] controversies occurred in 2016 when South Korean writer Han Kang, and her English translator Deborah Smith, were declared the winners of the International Booker Prize for that year. The Korean media rallied against Deborah Smith, with academic Charse Yun describing her work as an ‘adaptation’ rather than a translation. Deborah wrote a defence of her translation for the Los Angeles Review of Books, explaining that; ‘there is no such thing as a truly literal translation — no two languages’ grammars match, their vocabularies diverge, even punctuation has a different weight — there can be no such thing as a translation that is not “creative.” And while most of us translators think of ourselves as “faithful,” definitions of faithfulness can differ’. Han Kang has defended Smith, and chosen her as the translator for her subsequent novels Human Acts and The White Book, a display of solidarity that should not go unremarked upon. Translation is no mean feat, and translating fiction and poetry is widely considered to be one of the most onerous [7] and challenging tasks for translators. While Deborah Smith’s translation does indeed deviate from the original text, it was the Booker Prize’s recognition of both writer and translator that brought Han Kang to the west and brought this conversation to the cultural zeitgeist.
As with any prize, the Booker is not immune to controversy. Whether that be a flimsy [8] grasp of their own rules, or the ongoing debate surrounding the role of translators. Nevertheless, the Booker is here to stay, and I hope that my argument in favour of it was suitably compelling. Strolling through the aisles of your local bookshop in search of a new book can be a dizzying experience. There are so many new titles from first-time authors, with each book jacket proclaiming that this is the most promising work of fiction so far this century. So, if you are searching for something good to read this year, I recommend selecting a book from the Booker Prize shortlist for a guaranteed page-turner at the cutting edge of modern literature.