Image: Golden Booker judges Robert McCrum, Lemn Sissay, Kamila Shamsie, Simon Mayo and Hollie McNish

All 51 previous winners of the Man Booker Prize will compete for a once-off Golden Man Booker Prize this year.

The new prize, announced as part of the literary award’s 50th anniversary celebrations, will be judged by decade, with the final five books being put to public vote.

The Golden Booker aims to discover which of the 51 novels ‘has stood the test of time, remaining relevant to readers today’.

Five judges have been appointed to read the winning novels from each decade of the prize: writer and editor Robert McCrum (1970s), poet Lemn Sissay MBE (1980s), novelist Kamila Shamsie (1990s), broadcaster and novelist Simon Mayo (2000s), and poet Hollie McNish (2010s).

Each judge will select one book from their particular decade, and a ‘Golden Five’ shortlist will be announced at the Hay Festival on 26 May 2018.

The five books will then be put to a month-long public vote from 26 May to 25 June 2018 on the Man Booker Prize website to decide the overall winner, to be announced at the Man Booker 50 Festival on 8 July 2018.

‘The very best fiction endures and resonates with readers long after it is written,’ Baroness Helena Kennedy, Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, says. ‘I’m fascinated to see what our panel of excellent judges – including writers and poets, broadcasters and editors – and the readers of today make of the winners of the past, as they revisit the rich Man Booker library.’

The Booker Prize has previously run two special awards, The Best of Booker Award, marking the prize’s 40th anniversary in 2008, and the Booker of Bookers in 1993, for its 25th birthday. Both prizes were won by Salman Rushdie, for Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker 1981.

Other authors with a bit of an edge for the Golden Booker are Hilary Mantel, JM Coetzee and Peter Carey, who have all won the prize twice.

 

The Complete List of the Man Booker Winners since 1968

2017
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (United States)

2016
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (United States)

2015
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (Jamaica)

2014
The Narrow Road to the Deep North  by Richard Flanagan (Australia)

2013
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Canada/New Zealand)

2012
Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (United Kingdom)

2011
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (United Kingdom)

2010
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (United Kingdom)

2009
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (United Kingdom)

2008
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (India)

2007
The Gathering by Anne Enright (Ireland)

2006
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (India)

2005
The Sea by John Banville (Ireland)

2004
The Line of Beauty by Allan Hollinghurst (United Kingdom)

2003
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (Australia)

2002
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Canada)

2001
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (Australia)

2000
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Canada)

1999
Disgrace by JM Coetzee (South Africa)

1998
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (United Kingdom)

1997
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)

1996
Last Orders by Graham Swift (United Kingdom)

1995
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (United Kingdom)

1994
How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman (United Kingdom)

1993
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle (Ireland)

1992
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (United Kingdom)*

and

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (Canada/Sri Lanka)*

*Current rules stipulate that the prize may not be divided.

1991
The Famished Road by Ben Okri (Nigeria)

1990
Possession by AS Byatt (United Kingdom)

1989
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (United Kingdom/Japan)

1988
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (Australia)

1987
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (United Kingdom)

1986
The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis (United Kingdom)

1985
The Bone People by Keri Hulme (New Zealand)

1984
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (United Kingdom)

1983
Life & Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee (South Africa)

1982
Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally (Australia)

1981
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (United Kingdom/India)

1980
Rites of Passage by William Golding (United Kingdom)

1979
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (United Kingdom)

1978
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch (Ireland/United Kingdom)

1977
Staying On by Paul Scott (United Kingdom)

1976
Saville by David Storey (United Kingdom)

1975
Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (United Kingdom/Germany)

1974
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

and

Holiday by Stanley Middleton (United Kingdom)

1973
The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell (United Kingdom/Ireland)

1972
G. by John Berger (United Kingdom)

1971
‘In a Free State’ (short story)** by VS Naipaul (United Kingdom/Trinidad and Tobago)

**Current Man Booker Prize rules stipulate that, in order to be considered for the award, the submitted book ‘must be a unified and substantial work’, effectively making short stories ineligible.

1970***
Troubles by JG Farrell (United Kingdom/Ireland)

***Awarded in 2010. Due to an administrative decision that shifted the Booker Prize eligible publication dates, books published in the year 1970 were excluded from prize consideration for either the 1970 or the 1971 award. In an attempt to rectify the exclusion, in 2010 twenty-two novels published in 1970 were considered for what was deemed ‘The Lost Booker Prize’. JG Farrell’s Troubles was determined to be the winner, and the prize was awarded posthumously.

1970
The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens (United Kingdom)

1969
Something to Answer For by PH Newby (United Kingdom)

Categories Fiction International

Tags Golden Man Booker Prize Man Booker Prize Salman Rushdie