Friday, February 19, 2010

The Lost Man Booker

Two years after it was formed in 1969, the format of the Man Booker prize changed. As of 1971, instead of being awarded retrospectively, the prize was awarded to a book published in the same year; instead of being awarded in April, the date of the prize was moved to November. As a result, a whole publishing year was ignored and many excellent books dating from 1970 were never even considered. This discrepancy was noted by Peter Straus, honorary archivist to the Booker trust, who decided to set up a special award - this year - to give all those so-called 'lost' books a chance at winning. 

This blog has been set up in order to create a forum for all those wanting to join our Lost Booker Club. We'll be attempting to read all six books on the shortlist between 25 March (when the shortlist is released) and some time in May (when the prize is awarded). If you want to join us, then all you have to do is join in.

The shortlist hasn't been decided yet, but here's the longlist:

Brian Aldiss, The Hand Reared Boy 
H.E.Bates, A Little Of What You Fancy?
Nina Bawden, The Birds On The Trees
Melvyn Bragg, A Place In England
Christy Brown, Down All The Days
Len Deighton, Bomber 
J.G.Farrell, Troubles 
Elaine Feinstein, The Circle 
Shirley Hazzard, The Bay Of Noon 
Reginald Hill, A Clubbable Woman 
Susan Hill, I'm The King Of The Castle 
Francis King, A Domestic Animal 
Margaret Laurence, The Fire Dwellers 
David Lodge, Out Of The Shelter 
Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat
Shiva Naipaul, Fireflies
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander 
Joe Orton, Head To Toe 
Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven 
Ruth Rendell, A Guilty Thing Surprised 
Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat 
Patrick White, The Vivisector

Anyone willing to lay down any bets as to which of these 22 titles will make the cut?
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3 comments:

  1. CharlotteFebruary 22, 2010 at 9:56 AM

    Umm...
    Well speaking on the basis of absolutely no knowledge as I haven't read any of them, I'm going to guess:

    Nina Bawden
    Susan Hill
    Iris Murdoch
    Shival Naipaul
    Joe Orton
    Muriel Spark

    what do you think? and are there any on here you've actually read already?

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  2. thevanishinglakeFebruary 23, 2010 at 2:02 AM

    I haven't read any of them either! Your list looks pretty good, but I'd quite like to see Patrick White on there too. I thought he might have won the Booker in a different year, so I looked him up (Wikipedia). It turns out that he was nominated for The Twyborn Affair in 1979 but withdrew his nomination to allow younger writers a chance. The prize that year was won by Penelope Fitzgerald who was only 4 years younger than White! ... Not to judge Penelope Fitzgerald - I'm sure she was deserving of the prize in her own right. And Patrick White won enough awards anyway -so I don't feel sorry for him. But it would be nicely symmetrical, wouldn't it?

    Shiva Naipaul was V. S. Naipaul's younger brother but I don't know any of his work. It's an interesting list.

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  3. thevanishinglakeMarch 25, 2010 at 12:03 PM

    Ug. It's not the Lost Man Booker because it only became the Man Booker in 2002. How. Embarrassing.

    As a side-note, there were a number of amendments to the longlist.
    The Fire-Dwellers by Margaret Laurence was published in 1969
    Head to Toe by Joe Orton was actually published in 1971

    Trespasses by Paul Bailey was added to the longlist.

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