PJE's Booker Blog: The Man Booker Prize 2005: Contenders

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

The Man Booker Prize 2005: Contenders

The longlist for the 2005 ManBooker Prize is revealed tomorrow.
The bookies will probably make Ian McEwan favourite for Saturday, but there's plenty of competition. 2005 must be the best year in living memory for books by heavyweight authors, including seven other previous winners:-

John Berger (Here Is Where We Meet)
Anita Brookner (Leaving Home)
JM Coetzee (Slow Man)
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
Penelope Lively (Making It Up)
Stanley Middleton (Sterner Stuff)
and
Salman Rushdie (Shalimar The Clown).

Other big names with novels out this year include:

John Banville (The Sea)
Julian Barnes (Arthur and George)
Sebastian Faulks (Human Traces)
Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)
Doris Lessing (The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter)
Andrew Miller (The Optimists)
and
Zadie Smith (On Beauty).

I've seen Andrew Miller as a future Booker winner since I read his debut novel Ingenious Pain, and many people, including myself, may feel that Julian Barnes is 'due' this award. Overdue in fact.

There are always a few debut novelists in the mix as well, and one I have a hunch about this year is Vikas Swarup (Q & A). Other contenders (more hunches) might include Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black) and Toby Litt (The Seymour Tapes).

I was tempted to apply to be one of BBC 4's Booker Pundits. Reading all twenty longlisted titles in four weeks would have been an interesting challenge, but in the end I couldn't bear the thought of putting my phizog on telly.

I'm off to read some more of Here Is Where We Meet now. Although I don't think there is much chance of John Berger appearing on the list tomorrow - I suspect that donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers in 1972 may have made him persona non grata with the establishment. Their loss.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNERS

1969 P.H.Newby - Something To Answer For
1970 Bernice Rubens - The Elected Member
1971 V.S.Naipaul - In A Free State
1972 John Berger - G
1973 J.G.Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
1974 =Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist
1974 =Stanley Middleton - Holiday
1975 R.P.Jhabvala - Heat and Dust
1976 David Storey - Saville
1977 Paul Scott - Staying On
1978 Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea
1979 Penelope Fitzgerald - Offshore
1980 William Golding - Rites of Passage
1981 Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
1982 Thomas Keneally - Schindler's Ark
1983 J.M.Coetzee - The Life and Times of Michael K.
1984 Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac
1985 Keri Hulme - The Bone People
1986 Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils
1987 Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger
1988 Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda
1989 Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
1990 A.S.Byatt - Possession
1991 Ben Okri - The Famished Road
1992 =Barry Unsworth - Sacred Hunger
1992 =Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient
1993 Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha
1994 James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late
1995 Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
1996 Graham Swift - Last Orders
1997 Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
1998 Ian McEwan - Amsterdam
1999 J.M.Coetzee - Disgrace
2000 Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
2001 Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
2002 Yann Martel - Life of Pi
2003 DBC Pierre - Vernon God Little
2004 Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty
2005 John Banville - The Sea
2006 Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
2007 Anne Enright - The Gathering
2008 Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
2009 Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
2010 Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question
2011 Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
2012 Hilary Mantel - Bring Up The Bodies
2013 Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries