Booker Prize to honour ‘lost’ novel

ANTICIPATION and patience may be key to a successful novel, but a 40-year wait is perhaps taking the concept to extremes.

In an attempt to plug a near half-century old literary plot hole, organisers of the Man Booker Prize have established a new one-off award for works which slipped through their net.

In 1971, just two years after it began, the Man Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became a contest solely for the best novel in the year of publication.

Due to the change, the date the award was given moved from April to November. And while the decision was necessary to ensure all novels in a single calendar year were included, it meant that a wealth of fiction published in 1970 was lost to the major literary contest.

In an attempt to redress the balance, a one-off award called the Lost Man Booker Prize is to be awarded in May to one of 22 novelists in contention to receive the title they missed out on 40 years ago.

Among the writers to be placed on the award’s long-list include Irish author Christy Brown, for his work Down All The Days, and the Irish-born Iris Murdoch, for A Fairly Honourable Defeat.

Other authors on the list, which a three-person judging panel will whittle down to six works by March, include Australian writers Patrick White and Shirley Hazzard, Canadian novelist Margaret Laurence, Trinidadian Shiva Naipaul and the English writer of Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian.

When the six-novel shortlist is confirmed the public will be asked to decide the winner by voting on themanbookerprize.com.

The contest is the third time a celebratory award has been created by the group, following the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008 – both of which were won by Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.