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The Best Of The Booker
The Best of the Booker is a special prize awarded in commemoration of the Booker Prize's 40th anniversary. Eligible books included the 41 winners of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1968. The six shortlisted titles were announced on 12 May 2008 and were chosen by novelist Victoria Glendinning, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and Professor of English at University College London John Mullan. Among the nominees were the only two authors at that time to have won the Booker twice, Peter Carey and J. M. Coetzee, nominated for their novels ''Oscar & Lucinda'' (1988) and ''Disgrace'' (1999) respectively. The winner, as chosen by a public vote, was Salman Rushdie's ''Midnight's Children'', and was announced on July 10 at the London Literature Festival. ''Midnight's Children'' not only won the 1981 Booker, but also the special 1993 Booker of Bookers prize, which commemorated the award's 25th anniversary. The shortlisted titles were: *(1973) J. G. Farrell, ''The Siege of Krishnapu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Booker Prize
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, 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 of Nations, Commonwealth, Irish, and South African (and later Zimbabwean) citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014 it was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial. A five-person panel constituted by authors, librarians, literary agents, publishers, and booksellers is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation each year to choose the winning book. A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with anticipation and fanfare. Literary critics have noted that it is a mark of distinction fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midnight's Children
''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive. ''Midnight's Children'' sold over one million copies in the UK alone and won the Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981.Mullan, John.Salman Rushdie on the writing of Midnight's Children" ''The Guardian'', 26 July 2008. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. In 2003 the novel appeared at number 100 on the BBC's The Big Read poll which determined the UK's "best-loved novels" of all time. Background and plo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ghost Road
''The Ghost Road'' is a war novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1995 and winner of the Booker Prize. It is the third volume of a trilogy that follows the fortunes of shell-shocked British army officers towards the end of the First World War. The other books in the trilogy are ''Regeneration'' and ''The Eye in the Door''. The war poet Siegfried Sassoon, who appears as a major character in the first book, ''Regeneration'', is relegated to a minor role in this final volume, in which the main players are the fictional working-class officer Billy Prior and the real-life psychoanalyst William Rivers. Thus Barker explores possible relationships between real people and fictional characters. Plot summary Prior, despite his new-found peace of mind and engagement to munitions worker Sarah, has been affected by the war and therefore does not have a lot of concern for his safety. Prior has been cured of shell-shock and is preparing to return to France. Prior experiences numerous and ris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat Barker
Patricia Mary W. Barker, (née Drake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken. In 2012, ''The Observer'' named the Regeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels". Personal life Barker was born to a working-class family in Thornaby-on-Tees in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, on 8 May 1943. Her mother Moyra died in 2000; her father's identity is unknown. According to ''The Times'', Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while in the Wrens." In a social climate where illegitimacy was regarded with shame, she told people that the resulting child was her sister, rather than her daughter. They lived with Barker's grandmother Alice and step-grandfather William, until her mother married and moved out when Barker was seven. Barker could have joined her mother, she told ''The Guardi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Conservationist
''The Conservationist'' is a 1974 novel by the South African writer Nadine Gordimer. The book was a joint winner of the Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction. It is described as more complex in design and technique than Gordimer's earlier novels. Plot In South Africa under apartheid, Mehring is a rich white businessman who is not satisfied with his life. His ex-wife has gone to America, his liberal son, Terry (who is probably gay) criticizes his conservative/capitalist ways, and his lovers and colleagues do not actually seem interested in him. On a whim he buys a 400-acre farm outside the city, afterwards trying to explain this purchase to himself as the search for a higher meaning in life. But it is clear that he knows next to nothing about farming, and that black workers run it – Mehring is simply an outsider, an intruder on the daily life of "his" farm. His objective in buying the farm is to make a tax deductible expense. "No farm is beautiful unless it's productive," says Me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer (20 November 192313 July 2014) was a South African writer and political activist. She received the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognized as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as ''Burger's Daughter'' and ''July's People'' were banned. She was active in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned, and gave Nelson Mandela advice on his famous I Am Prepared to Die, 1964 defence speech at the trial which led to his conviction for life. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes. Early life Gordimer was born near Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. She was the second daughter of her parents. Her father, Isidore Gordimer, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Siege Of Krishnapur
''The Siege of Krishnapur'' is a novel by J. G. Farrell, first published in 1973. Inspired by events such as the sieges of Cawnapore (Kanpur) and Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town, Krishnapur, during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the British residents. The main characters find themselves subject to the increasing strictures and deprivation of the siege, which reverses the "normal" structure of life where Europeans govern Asian subjects. The book portrays an India under the control of the East India Company, as was the case in 1857. The absurdity of the class system in a town no one can leave becomes a source of comic invention, though the text is serious in intent and tone. The novel gained positive reviews from a variety of sources, and won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1973. Farrell used his acceptance speech to attack the sponsors for their business activities. In 2008 the book was shortlisted along with five other former ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Booker Of Bookers
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 (and later Zimbabwean) citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014 it was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial. A five-person panel constituted by authors, librarians, literary agents, publishers, and booksellers is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation each year to choose the winning book. A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with anticipation and fanfare. Literary critics have noted that it is a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, ''Midnight's Children'' (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. After his fourth novel, ''The Satanic Verses'' (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a '' fatwa'' calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. On 12 August 2022, a man stabbed Rushdie after rushing onto the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victoria Glendinning
Victoria Glendinning (''née'' Seebohm; born 23 April 1937) is a British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. She won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread Prize for biography. Early life and education She was born in Sheffield to a Quaker family. Her father was the banker Frederic Seebohm (created a life peer as Baron Seebohm in April 1972), while her great-grandfather was the economic historian, also called Frederic Seebohm. Her mother was clever, "but she never did anything with it, except wait for my father to come home". Her sister is Caroline Seebohm, the American biographer. Glendinning grew up near York and after attending Millfield School in Somerset, went up to Somerville College, Oxford to study modern languages. Awards and honours She is the only person to have won the Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Book Award) for biography twice, for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disgrace (novel)
''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. Plot David Lurie is a white South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. Lurie's sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin him, he becomes attached to a sex worker and attempts to have a romantic relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards. His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar & Lucinda
''Oscar and Lucinda'' is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey which won the 1988 Booker Prize and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award. It was shortlisted for The Best of the Booker. Plot introduction It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Devonian son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the ship over to Australia, and discover that they are both gamblers, one obsessive, the other compulsive. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, some 400 km up the New South Wales coast. This bet changes both their lives forever. Inspiration The novel partly takes its inspiration from ''Father and Son'', the autobiography of the English poet Edmund Gosse, which describes his relationship with his father, Philip Henry Gosse. Film A film version released in 1997 was directed by Gillian Armstrong and st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
