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Paul Beatty's The Sellout  have been announced as the winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize. This makes Paul the first American to have won the prize since the change in rules in 2015, allowing any book published in English in the UK eligible. According to the Man Booker Prize   "The Sellout is a searing satire on race relations in contemporary America", which was "described by The New York Times as a ‘metaphorical multicultural pot almost too hot to touch’, whilst the Wall Street Journal called it a ‘Swiftian satire of the highest order. Like someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre, Mr. Beatty has whispered “Racism” in a postracial world.’" Though the prize has over the years been bogged with controversy - readers keening about its dumbing down  (sacrificing literary merit on the altar of readability) and the bolder ones threatening to form another prize , The Man Booker Prize is still an authoritative source for good books, new novelists, and bold n...

Last year, it was announced that books by Americans would be allowed entry into the Man Booker Prize. Whereas some readers and fans saw this as an unwanted deviation and a loss of focus for the renowned Prize, others saw it as the correction of a long-drawn anomaly by accepting all English-speaking countries. Prior to this announcement the Man Booker only allowed entries from British, Irish and Commonwealth authors. British authors lead this year's longlist of 13 books with five nominations. This is followed by American authors who enter the Prize for the first time with four nominations. The rest of the nominations is held by two Irish writers and one Australian writer. Below is the list: Joshua Ferris (US) – To Rise Again at a Decent Hour Richard Flanagan (Australia) – The Narrow Road to the Deep North Karen Joy Fowler (US) – We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Siri Hustvedt (US) – The Blazing World Howard Jacobson (Britain) – J Paul Kingsnorth (Britain) – The Wake...

October has seen the announcement of several literature awards: from Nigeria's US$ 100,000 NLNG Prize, to the Pounds 50,000 Man Booker Prize. Overall, 2013 is the year for women writing, both young and old. NLNG Prize for Literature, Nigeria:  An Ibandan, Oyo State-based Lawyer and Poet, Tade Ipadeola, was announced the winner of the the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature. Ipadeola, president of PEN Nigeria, won the US$100,000 prize with poetry anthology The Sahara Testaments. The prize is sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited.  The Sahara Testaments  won the prize ahead of Promise Ogochukwu's Wild Letters  and Chidi Amu's Through the Window of a Sandcastle.  The three entries were shortlisted from 201 entries received for the prize. The judges described  The Sahara Testaments as a remarkable epic covering the terrain and peopel of Africa from the very dawn of creation, through the present, to the future. The text uses Sahara as a metonym for the pro...

Actually I am late in posting this as the Booker Prize winner will be announced  in two weeks time on October 15, 2013. It hovered on the peripheral of my mind but I never came around to posting it. As already known Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo made the list with her book We Need New Names . Here are the six-shortlisted books: Wee Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin Harvest by Jim Crace According to the Booker Prize site : The six books on the list could not be more diverse. There are entries from novelists from New Zealand, England, Canada and Zimbabwe - each with its own highly distinctive taste. They range in size from the 832 pages of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries  to the 104 page The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin. The times represented stretch from the biblical Middle East (Toibin) to contemporary Zimba...

Hilary Mantel has won the 2012 Man Booker Prize with her book Bringing Up the Bodies, a sequel to her 2009 Booker-Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall .  The 50,000 Pounds prize was announced on October 16, 2012 at 9:40 pm British time at a dinner at Guildhall. This win makes her the third author to have won the Booker Prize on two different occasions. The other two are Peter Carey (1988 & 2001) and J.M. Coetzee (1983 & 1999).  She is the first person to have the first two books of a trilogy win the Booker Prize. Could she make it three in three?  Read more here . The Guardian reported that the Chair of Judges, Peter Stothard, described Hilary Mantel as 'the greatest modern English prose writer.'

The Man Booker Prize shortlist for this year has been announced (today, September 11, 2012). The shortlisted books were selected from a longlist of 12 books . The following are books selected by the judges chaired by Sir Peter Stothard: Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists   (Myrmidon Books) Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber) Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies   (Fourth Estate) Alison Moore, The Light House   (Salt) Will Self, Umbrella   (Bloomsbury) Jeet Thayil, Nacropolis   (Faber & Faber) According to Peter Stothard After re-reading an extraordinary longlist of twelve, it was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose - and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas. Trivias The shortlist includes two debut...

I am very late on this, yet I feel I should still share it with you. On July 25, 2012, the Man Booker Prize organisers released the long list of competing books for 2012. This list consist of 12 books chosen by a panel of judges chaired by Sir Peter Stothard. The longlisted books were selected from a total of 145 titles. The following are the books on the list: The Yips by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate) The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre) Philida by Andre Brink (Harvill Secker) The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon Books) Skios by Michael Frayn (Faber & Faber) The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday) Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (And Other Stories) Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt) Umbrella by Will Self (Bloomsbury) Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (Faber & Faber) Communion Town by Sam Thompson (Fourth Estate) According to the Ch...

Julian Barnes has won the Man Booker Prize for 2011 with his book A Sense of Ending . It won from a shortlist of six including: Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues, Carlol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie, Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English, which had a Ghanaian character named Opoku, AD Miller's Snowdrops and Patrick deWitt for Brothers Sisters. Though there had been several debates surrounding the shortlist with some describing it as a "dumbing down" and others establishing a new literature prize to rival The Man Booker for what in their view is the Booker's " now prioritises a notion of 'readability' over artistic achievement ", readers and followers of the award unanimously agreed on the winner. About Julian Barnes: Julian Barnes is the author of ten previous novels, three books of short stories and three collections of journalism. Now 65, his work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In France he is the only writer t...

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 shortlist was announced on Tuesday September 6, 2011. From a longlist of 13 books comes a shortlist of 6. Jualian Barnes The Sense of Ending  (Jonathan Cape) Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie  (Canongate) Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta Books) Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues  (Serpent's Tail) Stephen Kelman Pigeon English  (Bloomsbury) A.D. Miller Snowdrops  (Atlantic Books) This list contains 2 first time novelists: Stephen Kelman and A.D. Miller and two have had success with the prize in the past: Julian Barnes and Carol Birch. Four of the books are from independent publishers, two are Canadian writers and four are British. ImageNations interest is in Esi Edugyan who, though a Canadian, was born to Ghanaian emigrants. Then there is also the Ghanaian connection, in terms of the protagonist, in Kelman's Pigeon English. My friend Geosi has suggested that after reading all the reviews, he tips Esi to win...

I have been monitoring twitter for the past four hours for this announce. According to the announcement: A total of 138 books, seven of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen' longlist. They are: Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending  (Jonathan Cape - Random House) Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side  (Faber) Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie  (Canongate Books) Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers  (Granta) Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues  (Serpent's Tail - Profile) Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats  (Oneworld) Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child  (Picador - Pan Macmillan) Stephen Kelman Pigeon English  (Bloomsbury) Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days  (Seren Books) A.D. Miller Snowdrops  (Atlantic) Alison Pick Far to Go  (Headline Review) Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb  (Sandstone Press) D.J. Taylor Derby Day  (Chatto & Windus - Random House...

The Man Booker Shortlist came out yesterday, September 7, 2010. The list has been shortened from the longlist of thirteen (13) to a shortlist of six (6). This time the brouhaha that always follows a shortlist has been slightly muted as most people agree that all the shortlisted authors deserve to be there. Yes! But The Man Booker Prize, worth 50,000 Pounds, would not be Man Booker without the slightest controversies concerning those who are shortlisted. So the absence of Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian author of The Slap and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet , has become an issue and it is very well being discussed by literary enthusiasts. ImageNations interest is in Damon Galgut's In A Strange Room . If Damon's shortlisted book wins the Man Booker Prize he would be the third South African to win the prize, after Nadine Gordimer won with The Conservationist in 1974 and J.M. Coetzee won with Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and with Disgr...

THE YEAR OF LITERARY WOMEN WITH INITIALS H.M. Over the week, two prestigious literary awards were announced, the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize, and both were won by women whose initials were coincidentally identical. The Nobel Prize in Literature was won by Herta Muller , a German Romanian. Her choice has caused a stir in the literary circles as people are perceiving the awards to be too Eurocentric judging from the fact that the last time an American won it was in 1993 and Asians hardly ever win. On the other Hilary Mantel  has won the Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall, which had J.M. Coetzee's Summertime in the shortlist. This award has been accepted by all and none has as yet complained. You can read also read about these at here and there ... THE SHOCKER AWARDS Whilst I have consistently insisted on the abundance of literary talents in Nigeria, the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Awards for Literature held this Saturday October 10, 2009, saw ...