Man Booker Prize

Man Booker Prize, an annual prize of £50,000 (originally £20,000) for a work of fiction by a living British, Irish, or Commonwealth writer. Great Britain's premier literary award, it was originally known as the Booker Prize and in 1969 was underwritten by the British food-distribution company Booker PLC, now part of The Big Food Group PLC. In 2002 the Man Group, a British hedge fund, became a co-sponsor of the award, which was renamed. Recipients of the award have included V. S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Iris Murdoch, Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt, J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, and Julian Barnes. The Man Booker International Prize was introduced in 2004. An award of £60,000 given for overall achievement in fiction, it is presented every two years to a living author of any nationality whose fiction is either written in English or is generally available in English translation. It was first given (2005) to the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare and was subsequently awarded to Nigerian Chinua Achebe (2007), Canadian Alice Munro (2009), and American Philip Roth. In 2007 the Man Asian Literary Prize was founded by the Hong Kong International Literary Festival Ltd. with the financial support of the Man Group; it aims to bring new Asian writers to the attention of the world literary community, to encourage the translation and publication in English of such writers' works, and to emphasize Asia's increasing role in world literature. The prize now awards $30,000 to the winning writer and $5,000 to the translator.

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Publication information: Article title: Man Booker Prize. Encyclopedia title: The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. © 2012 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. Used with the permission of Columbia University Press. All Rights Reserved. Publisher: The Columbia University Press. Place of publication: Not available. Publication year: 2013.

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