Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Rohinton Mistry is an Indian-born Canadian writer. He has been the recipient of many awards including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2012. Each of his first three novels was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His novels to date have been set in India, told from the perspective of Parsis, and explore themes of family life, poverty, discrimination, and the corrupting influence of society.
Alan James Hollinghurst is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and for his novel The Line of Beauty the 2004 Booker Prize. Hollinghurst is credited with having helped gay-themed fiction to break into the literary mainstream through his six novels since 1988.
George Szirtes is a British poet and translator from the Hungarian language into English. Originally from Hungary, he has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life after coming to the country as a refugee at the age of eight. Szirtes was a judge for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. Prizes are awarded in three categories: Fiction, Biography and Drama.
The Last King of Scotland is a novel by journalist Giles Foden, published by Faber and Faber in 1998. Focusing on the rise of Ugandan President Idi Amin and his reign as dictator from 1971 to 1979, the novel, which interweaves fiction and historical fact, is written as the memoir of a fictional Scottish doctor in Amin's employ. Foden's novel received critical acclaim and numerous awards when it was published. In 2006, a loose eponymous film adaptation was released.
Nicholas William Richmond Shakespeare FRSL is a British novelist and biographer, described by the Wall Street Journal as "one of the best English novelists of our time".
Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist. His debut book was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories. He has since published a number of novels with good reviews. To Siberia (1996), set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998 and nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake (2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990 ; it won the Brage Prize for 2000. His 2008 novel Jeg forbanner tidens elv won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2009, with an English translation published in 2010.
John Robert McCrum is an English writer and editor, holding senior editorial positions at Faber & Faber over seventeen years, followed by a long association with The Observer.
David Dabydeen FRSL is a Guyanese-born broadcaster, novelist, poet and academic. He was formerly Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010, and was the youngest Member of the UNESCO Executive Board (1993–1997), elected by the General Council of all Member States of UNESCO. He was appointed Guyana's Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinaire to China, from 2010 to 2015. He is one of the longest serving diplomats in the history of Guyana, most of his work done in a voluntary unpaid capacity.
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (1990–2015) was a British literary award. It was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support of Arts Council England. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by BookTrust, but retaining the "Independent" in the name. In 2015, the award was disbanded in a "reconfiguration" in which it was merged with the Man Booker International Prize.
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakespeare and other topics, and he has published widely on Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture.
Trezza Azzopardi is a Welsh writer, who has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won several other literary prizes.
David Oluwale (1930–1969) was a British Nigerian who drowned in the River Aire in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1969. The events leading to his drowning have been described as "the physical and psychological destruction of a homeless, black man whose brutal, systematic harassment was orchestrated by the Leeds city police force." Oluwale's death resulted in the first successful prosecution of British police officers for involvement in the death of a black person. The legacy of his life and experiences – as well as his death – has shaped the discussion of systematic racism within British legal institutions, police brutality and practice, inequality, and mental health policy. He has inspired artworks, been the subject of several books and documentaries, and a blue plaque in Leeds commemorates his life.
Crossing the River is a historical novel by British author Caryl Phillips, published in 1993. The Village Voice calls it "a fearless reimagining of the geography and meaning of the African diaspora." The Boston Globe said, "Crossing the River bears eloquently chastened testimony to the shattering of black lives."
James Crace is an English novelist, playwright and short story writer. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999, Crace was born in Hertfordshire and has lectured at the University of Texas at Austin. His novels have been translated into 28 languages—including Norwegian, Japanese, Portuguese and Hebrew.
Kōtarō Isaka is a Japanese author of mystery fiction, best known for his Hitman novel/manga series, including Maoh: Juvenile Remix (2007–2009), the first of which, 3 Assassins, was adapted as a Japanese feature film, Grasshopper (2015), and the second of which, Maria Beetle, was adapted as an American feature film, Bullet Train (2022).
A Disaffection is a novel written by Scottish writer James Kelman, first published in 1989 by Secker and Warburg. Set in Glasgow, it is written in Scots using a stream-of-consciousness style, centring on a 29-year-old schoolteacher named Patrick Doyle. The novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1989, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2012, A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black.
Colour Me English is a 2011 collection of essays by Caryl Phillips. Written over a period of 20 years, the essays deal with themes of identity, home and belonging.
John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. He has won the Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature; has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; knighted by Italy; is one of the most acclaimed writers in the English language.
