The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "Handmaids": women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.
The Blind Assassin is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century but mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.
Bina Shah is a Pakistani writer, columnist and blogger living in Karachi.
Dorothy Koomson is a contemporary British novelist, who is of Ghanaian descent. She has been described as "Britain's biggest selling black author of adult fiction".
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika FRSL is a British-Nigerian writer of novels, short stories and essays and an active member of the literary community, particularly supporting and amplifying young writers and female voices. She is the author of two well-received novels, In Dependence (2009) and Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), as well as the non-fiction collection Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora (2022), and her writing has appeared in publications including Granta, Transition, Guernica, and OZY, and previously served as founding Books Editor of OZY. Manyika's work also features in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written four full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. A House for Alice was published in 2023.
Reni Eddo-Lodge is a British journalist and author, whose writing primarily focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She has written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Voice, BuzzFeed, Vice, i-D and Dazed & Confused, and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Delia Jarrett-Macauley, also known as Dee Jarrett-Macauley, is a London-based British writer, academic and broadcaster of Sierra Leonean heritage. Her debut novel, Moses, Citizen & Me, won the 2006 Orwell Prize for political writing, the first novel to have been awarded the prize. She has devised and presented features on BBC Radio, as well as being a participant in a range of programmes. As a multi-disciplinary scholar in history, literature and cultural politics, she has taught at Leeds University, Birkbeck, University of London, and other educational establishments, most recently as a fellow in English at the University of Warwick. She is also a business and arts consultant, specialising in organisation development.
Ayesha Harruna Attah is a Ghanaian-born fiction writer. She lives in Senegal.
Milkman is a historical psychological fiction novel written by the Northern Irish author Anna Burns. Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the story follows an 18-year-old girl, "middle sister," who is harassed by an older married man known as "the milkman" and then as "Milkman". It is Burns's first novel to be published after Little Constructions in 2007, and is her third overall.
The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). The novel is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. It is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.
Blonde Roots is a prose novel written by British-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo. Published by Penguin UK in 2009 and Penguin USA in 2010, this satirical novel reverts notions of transatlantic slavery, placing Africans as masters of European slaves. In 2009, it was the Orange Prize Youth Panel Choice and the Big Red Read Award.
The 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on 14 October 2019. The Booker longlist of 13 books was announced on 23 July, and was narrowed down to a shortlist of six on 3 September. The Booker Prize was awarded jointly to Margaret Atwood for The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other. This was the first time the prize was shared since 1992, despite a rule change banning joint winners.
Sheena Kamal is a Canadian novelist. Her works include thrillers and young adult fiction.
Queenie is a new adult novel written by British author Candice Carty-Williams and published by Trapeze, an imprint of Orion, in 2019. The novel is about the life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, troubled 25-year-old British-Jamaican woman who is not having a very good year. In 2023, Channel 4 announced that Queenie had been made into a television drama, created and executive produced by Carty-Williams which aired in June 2024.
