The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives international publicity which usually leads to a 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 it was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Richard Manik de Zoysa was a well-known Sri Lankan journalist, author, human rights activist and actor, who was abducted and murdered on 18 February 1990. His murder caused widespread outrage inside the country and is widely believed to have been carried out by a death squad linked to elements within the government.
Funny Boy is a coming-of-age novel by Sri Lankan-Canadian author Shyam Selvadurai. First published by McClelland and Stewart in September 1994, the novel won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Premawathi Manamperi was a woman from Kataragama, Sri Lanka. She was arrested on suspicion of leading a rebel group that disturbed the country in 1971. That year, she was handed over to the army where she was tortured, possibly raped and paraded naked through the streets, and killed. Her death is a prominent event in Sri Lankan crime history.
S. Thomas' Preparatory School is a private, Anglican, multi-ethnic, primary and secondary day school for boys aged 5 to 16 years, located in Kollupitiya in the Colombo District of the Western Province of Sri Lanka.
The Gratiaen Prize is an annual literary prize for the best work of literary writing in English by a resident of Sri Lanka. It was founded in 1992 by the Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje with the money he received as joint-winner of the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient. The prize is named after Ondaatje's mother, Doris Gratiaen.
The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is an international literary prize awarded annually to writers of any ethnicity or nationality writing about South Asia themes such as culture, politics, history, or people. It is for an original full-length novel written in English, or translated into English. The award is for novels published in the year preceding the judging of the prize. The winner receives 25,000 USD. The DSC Prize was instituted by Surina Narula and Manhad Narula in 2010 and its vision is to showcase and reward the best writing about the South Asian region and bring it to a global audience.
Soharn Randy Boyagoda is a Canadian writer, intellectual and critic known for his novels Governor of the Northern Province (2006), Beggar's Feast (2011), Original Prin (2018), and Dante's Indiana (2021). He is also the author of a biography of Richard John Neuhaus (2015). He is the past principal and vice-president of the University of St. Michael's College in Toronto, where he held the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts and Letters. He is currently the Vice-Dean, Undergraduate, of the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto. Boyagoda is also a professor in the University of Toronto's English Department, and currently chairs the PEN Canada Advisory Board. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.
Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer. He grew up in Colombo, studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. His 2010 debut novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize, the Gratiaen Prize and was adjudged the second greatest cricket book of all time by Wisden. His third novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was announced as the winner of the 2022 Booker Prize on 17 October 2022.
Helen Ruth Castor is a British historian of the medieval and Tudor period and a BBC broadcaster. She taught history at the University of Cambridge and is the author of books including Blood and Roses (2005) and She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (2010). Programmes she has presented include BBC Radio 4's Making History and She-Wolves on BBC Four.
Commonwealth Foundation presented a number of prizes between 1987 and 2011. The main award was called the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was composed of two prizes: the Best Book Prize was awarded from 1987 to 2011; the Best First Book prize was awarded from 1989 to 2011. In addition the Commonwealth Short Story Competition was awarded from 1996 to 2011.
Audrey Magee is an Irish novelist and journalist. Her debut novel, The Undertaking, was nominated for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014. Her novel The Colony was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
Graeme Macrae Burnet is a Scottish writer, whose novels have won and been nominated for several awards. He has also written occasionally for The Guardian, The Observer and Le Monde. His first novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, earned him the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award in 2013, and his second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. His third novel, The Accident on the A35, is a sequel to The Disappearance ofAdèle Bedeau. In 2017, he won the Author of the Year category in the Sunday Herald Culture Awards. One review in The Guardian described Burnet's novels as an experiment with a genre that might be called "false true crime". In July 2022, Burnet's novel Case Study (2021) was named on the longlist of the Booker Prize.
Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a 2010 novel by Shehan Karunatilaka. Using cricket as a device to write about Sri Lankan society, the book tells the story of an alcoholic journalist's quest to track down a missing cricketer of the 1980s. The novel was critically hailed on publication, winning awards and much positive review coverage.
Oh William! is a novel by American writer Elizabeth Strout, published on October 19, 2021, by Random House. The novel returns to the fictional rural town of Amgash, Illinois, from Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) and Anything Is Possible (2017).
The Big Jubilee Read is a 2022 campaign to promote reading for pleasure and to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. A list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, 10 from each decade of Elizabeth II's reign, was selected by a panel of experts and announced by the BBC and The Reading Agency on 18 April 2022.
The 2022 Booker Prize was a literary award given for the best English novel of the year. It was announced on 17 October 2022, during a ceremony hosted by Sophie Duker at the Roundhouse in London. The longlist was announced on 26 July 2022. The shortlist was announced on 6 September. Leila Mottley, at 20, was the youngest longlisted writer to date, and Alan Garner, at 87, the oldest. The majority of the 13 titles were from independent publishers. The prize was awarded to Shehan Karunatilaka for his novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, receiving £50,000. He is the second Sri Lankan to win the prize, after Michael Ondaatje.
The Trees is a 2021 novel by American author Percival Everett, published by Graywolf Press.
Sort of Books is an independent British publishing house started in 1999 by Mark Ellingham and Natania Jansz, founders of the Rough Guides travel series. The company publishes both original and classic fiction and non-fiction titles: "The sort of books [readers] will want to discover and re-discover."
The Story of a Brief Marriage is the debut novel by Anuk Arudpragasam which was published on September 6, 2016 by Flatiron Books.
