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.
Paul Edward Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name.
Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognised as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great benefit to humanity".
Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.
William Andrew Murray Boyd is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and screenwriter.
A House for Mr Biswas is a 1961 novel by V. S. Naipaul, significant as Naipaul's first work to achieve acclaim worldwide. It is the story of Mohun Biswas, a Hindu Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the influential Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by it, and who finally sets the goal of owning his own house. It relies on some biographical elements from the experience of the author's father, and views a colonial world sharply with postcolonial perspectives.
A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.
Shiva Naipaul, born Shivadhar Srinivasa Naipaul in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, was an Indo-Trinidadian and British novelist and journalist.
Atomised, also known as The Elementary Particles, is a novel by the French author Michel Houellebecq, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and their mental struggles against their situations in modern society. It was translated into English by Frank Wynne as Atomised in the UK and as The Elementary Particles in the US. It won the International Dublin Literary Award for writer and translator.
The Master is a novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. His fifth novel, it received the International Dublin Literary Award, the Stonewall Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year and, in France, Le prix du meilleur livre étranger in 2005. It was also shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize
José Eduardo Agualusa Alves da Cunha is an Angolan journalist and writer of Portuguese and Brazilian descent. He studied agronomy and silviculture in Lisbon, Portugal. Currently he resides in the Island of Mozambique, working as a writer and journalist. He also has been working to establish a public library on the island.
When We Were Orphans is the fifth novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 2000. It is loosely categorised as a detective novel. When We Were Orphans was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize.
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Hotel World is a 2001 novel written by Ali Smith, published by Hamish Hamilton. It won both the Scottish Arts Council Book Award (2001) and the Encore Award (2002).
Fasting, Feasting is a novel by Indian writer Anita Desai, first published in 1999 in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1999.
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienation in the wider world, and his vigilant chronicles of life and travels. He wrote in prose that was widely admired, but his views sometimes aroused controversy. He published more than thirty books over fifty years.
Magic Seeds is a 2004 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul published by Knopf in the US and Picador in the UK. The novel is set in India and Europe.
Imraan Coovadia is a South African novelist, essayist, and academic. He is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Cape Town. He has taught 19th-Century Studies and Creative Writing at a number of US universities. His debut novel, The Wedding, published simultaneously in the US and SA in 2001, has been translated into Hebrew and Italian.
The Impressionist is Hari Kunzru's debut novel, first published in 2003. Kunzru received the Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award for the book's publication.
"One out of Many" is a short story within an unconventionally formatted novel entitled In a Free State, written by V. S. Naipaul and originally published by André Deutsch in 1971. The protagonist, Santosh, is forced to give up his familiar life inside the stratified castes of India to move with his employer, now an Indian ambassador, to Washington, D.C., during the civil rights protests and commensurate "hippie era". Themes developed in the story reflect Santosh's abrupt displacement from a comfortable, life-long acclimation in India, to an alien environment in the United States, where his beliefs, perceptions, and sense of belonging are upended.
