✩ booker prize list ✩

The Elected Member

Bernice Rubens · 1970

In a Free State: A Novel

V. S. Naipaul · 1971

G

John Berger · 1972

The Siege of Krishnapur

J. G. Farrell · 1974

The Conservationist

Nadine Gordimer · 1975

Holiday

Stanley Middleton · 1975

Heat and Dust

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala · 1976

Saville

David Storey · 1976

Staying On

Paul Scott, Richard Brown · 1977

The Sea, the Sea

Iris Murdoch · 1978

Offshore

Penelope Fitzgerald · 1979

Rites of Passage

William Golding · 1982

Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie · 2009

Life and Times of Michael K

J. M. Coetzee · 1985

Hotel Du Lac

Anita Brookner · 1985

The Bone People

Keri Hulme · 1986

The Old Devils

Kingsley Amis · 1988

Moon Tiger

Penelope Lively · 1989

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey · 1989

The Remains of the Day (Vintage International)

Kazuo Ishiguro · 1990

Possession

A. S. Byatt · 1991

The Famished Road

Ben Okri · 1993

The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje · 1992

Sacred Hunger

Barry Unsworth · 1992

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Roddy Doyle · 1995

How late it was, how late

James Kelman · 1994

The Ghost Road

Pat Barker · 1995

Last Orders

Graham Swift · 1997

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy · 2008

In 1969 In Kerala, India, Rahel And Her Twin Brother, Estha, Struggle To Forge A Childhood For Themselves Amid The Destruction Of Their Family Life, As They Discover That The Entire World Can Be Transformed In A Single Moment. Paradise Pickles & Preserves -- Pappachi's Moth -- Big Man The Laltain, Small Man The Mombatti -- Abhilash Talkies -- God's Own Country -- Cochin Kangaroos -- Wisdom Exercise Notebooks -- Welcome Home, Our Sophie Mol -- Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen, Mrs. Rajagopalan -- River In The Boat -- God Of Small Things -- Kochu Thomban -- Pessimist And The Optimist -- Work Is A Struggle -- Crossing -- Few Hours Later -- Cochin Harbor Terminus -- History House -- Saving Ammu -- Madras Mail -- Cost Of Living. Arundhati Roy. Originally Published In The United States: New York : Random House, 1997. Copyright © 1997 By Arundhati Roy. Reading Group Guide Copyright © 2008 By Random House, Inc. Booker Prize, 1997.

Amsterdam

Ian McEwan · 1998

Disgrace

J. M. Coetzee · 2000

The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood · 2007

The bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative, beginning with the mysterious death of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945. Decades later, Laura’s sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric family’s history. Intertwined with Iris’s account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind killer on a distant planet. These richly layered stories-within-stories gradually illuminate the secrets that have long haunted the Chase family, coming together in a brilliant and astonishing final twist.

True History of the Kelly Gang

Peter Carey · 2007

Life of Pi

Yann Martel · 2002

Vernon God Little

DBC Pierre · 2005

The Line of Beauty

Alan Hollinghurst · 2005

The Sea

John Banville · 2005

The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai · 2007

The Gathering

Anne Enright · 2007

The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga · 2008

Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel · 2009

The Finkler Question

Howard Jacobson · 2010

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes · 2012

Bring Up the Bodies (Wolf Hall, Book 2)

Hilary Mantel · 2013

The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton · 2014

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Richard Flanagan · 2015

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James · 2014

Winner of the Booker Prize One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Decade One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years A “thrilling, ambitious . . . intense” (Los Angeles Times) novel that explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the late 1970s, from the author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James combines brilliant storytelling with his unrivaled skills of characterization and meticulous eye for detail to forge an enthralling novel of dazzling ambition and scope. On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven gunmen stormed the singer’s house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but much has been whispered, gossiped and sung about in the streets of West Kingston. Rumors abound regarding the assassins’ fates, and there are suspicions  that the attack was politically motivated. A Brief History of Seven Killings delves deep into that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica’s history and beyond. James deftly chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters – gunmen, drug dealers, one-night stands, CIA agents,  even ghosts – over the course of thirty years as they roam the streets of 1970s Kingston, dominate the crack houses of 1980s New York, and ultimately reemerge into the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Along the way, they learn that evil does indeed cast long shadows, that justice and retribution are inextricably linked, and that no one can truly escape his fate. Gripping and inventive, shocking and irresistible, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a mesmerizing modern classic of power, mystery, and insight.

The Sellout

Paul Beatty · 2015

Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders · 2018

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE<br/><br/>The “devastatingly moving” (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented<br/><br/>One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years • One of Paste’s Best Novels of the Decade<br/><br/>Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book • One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year<br/><br/>February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.<br/><br/>From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.<br/><br/>Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?<br/><br/>“A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review<br/><br/>“A masterpiece.”—Zadie Smith

Milkman

Anna Burns · 2018

The Testaments

Margaret Atwood · 2019

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • A modern masterpiece that "reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)—and can be read on its own or as a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale.   “Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling Booker Prize-winning novel, now updated with additional content that explores the historical sources, ideas, and material that inspired Atwood.    More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.   Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia.  Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways.   With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

Girl, Woman, Other

Bernardine Evaristo · 2019

Teeming with life and crackling with energy - a love song to modern Britain, to black womanhood, to the ever-changing heart of London<br/>Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.<br/>Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.<br/>'A daring evocation of black British history... Sexy, punchy [and] fresh' Independent on Sunday on The Emperor's Babe

Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart · 2020

The Promise

Damon Galgut · 2021

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Shehan Karunatilaka · 2022

<p><b>Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a searing satire set amid the mayhem of the Sri Lankan civil war.</b></p> <p>Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka.</p> <p>Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire” (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.</p>

Prophet Song

Paul Lynch · 2023

Orbital

Samantha Harvey · 2024