Special Collections
Man Booker Prize Award Winners
Description: Bookshare is pleased to offer the following titles awarded the Man Booker Prize for fiction and the Man Booker International Prize for translated works of fiction. #award
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Wolf Hall
by Hilary MantelIn the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power.
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum.
Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
Man Booker Prize winner
Life of Pi
by Yann MartelAfter the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan--and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years.
Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.
Man Booker Prize winner
Life of Pi (Illustrated)
by Yann Martel and Tomislav TorjanacAfter the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan--and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years.
Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.
In 2005 an international competition was held to find the perfect artist to illustrate Yann Martel's Man Booker Prize-winning novel. From thousands of entrants, Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac was chosen. This lavishly produced edition features forty of Torjanac's beautiful four-color illustrations, bringing Life of Pi to splendid, eye-popping life. Tomislav Torjanac says of his illustrations: "My vision of the illustrated edition of Life of Pi is based on paintings from a first person's perspective--Pi's perspective. The interpretation of what Pi sees is intermeshed with what he feels and it is shown through [the] use of colors, perspective, symbols, hand gestures, etc."
Man Booker Prize winner
Amsterdam
by Ian McewanThe Booker Prize-winning contemporary morality tale—cleverly disguised as a comic novel—from the acclaimed author of Atonement. On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen…
Holiday
by Stanley MiddletonEdwin Fisher has fled to a seaside resort of his childhood past to try to come to terms with the death of his baby son and the collapse of his marriage to Meg. On this strange and lonely holiday, as he seeks to understand what went wrong, Edwin must find someway to think about what he has been and decide upon where he can go next.
Man Booker Prize winner
The Sea, The Sea
by Iris MurdochThe sea: turbulent and leaden, transparent and opaque, magician and mother... When Charles Arrowby, over sixty, a demi god of the theatre -- director, playwright and actor -- retires from his glittering London world in order to 'abjure magic and become a hermit', it is to the sea that he turns. He hopes at least to escape from 'the woman' -- but unexpectedly meets one whom he loved long ago. His buddhist cousin, James, also arrives. he is menaced by a monster from the deep. Charles finds his 'solitude' peopled by the drama of his own fantasies and obsessions.
Man Booker Prize winner
In a Free State
by V. S. NaipaulWinner of the 1971 Booker Prize, this grouping of two stories -- a short novel within a prologue and an epilogue from Naipaul's travel journals -- is held together by Naipaul's pervading concern with the themes of exile, freedom and prejudice.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Something To Answer For
by P. H. NewbyIt was 1956 and he was in Port Said. About these two facts Townrow was reasonably certain.
He had been summoned there, to Egypt, by the widow of his deceased friend, Elie Khoury. Having been found dead in the street, she is convinced he was murdered, but nobody seems to agree with her. What of Leah Strauss, the mistress? And of the invading British paratroops? Only an Englishman, surely, would take for granted that the British would have behaved themselves. In this weirdly disorientating world, Townrow is forced towards a re-examination of the basic rules by which he has been living his life; and into a realization that he too may have something to answer for.
Winner of the Inaugural 1969 Man Booker Prize
The Famished Road
by Ben OkriAzaro is a spirit child, an abiku, existing, according to the African tradition, between life and death. Born into the human world, he must experience its joys and tragedies. His spirit companions come to him often, hounding him to leave his mortal world and join them in their idyllic one. Azaro foresees a trying life ahead, but he is born smiling. This is his story.
When President Bill Clinton first went to Africa he quoted from The Famished Road, which has inspired literature, art, politics, and pop songs--and even been referenced in an episode of The Simpsons. A transformative story for all ages and all times, it means many things to many people. Few contemporary novels have aroused as much passion as this one. Indeed, twenty-five years after its breakout publication, the iconic story of Azaro's travels continues to mesmerize new generations.
For readers of Things Fall Apart or One Hundred Years of Solitude, this Man Booker Prize-winning blend of fabulism and gritty realism by the Nigerian author of Astonishing the Gods and Dangerous Love is a "dazzling, hypnotic" journey through Africa that "weaves the humblest detail with the most extravagant flight of fancy to create an astonishing fictional tapestry" (San Francisco Chronicle). Already considered a classic of world literature, it is "a masterpiece if ever one existed" (The Boston Sunday Globe).
Man Booker Prize winner
The English Patient
by Michael OndaatjeWith ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal,and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening.
Man Booker Prize winner
Vernon God Little
by Dbc PierreHailed by the critics and lauded by readers for its riotously funny and scathing portrayal of America in an age of trial by media, materialism, and violence, Vernon God Little was an international sensation when it was first published in 2003 and awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
The memorable portrait of America is seen through the eyes of a wry, young, protagonist. Fifteen-year-old Vernon narrates the story with a cynical twang and a four-letter barb for each of his townsfolk, a medley of characters. With a plot involving a school shooting and death-row reality TV shows, Pierre's effortless prose and dialogue combine to form a novel of postmodern gamesmanship.
Winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize
The Discomfort Of Evening
by Marieke Lucas RijneveldTen-year-old Jas lives with her strictly religious parents and her siblings on a dairy farm where waste and frivolity are akin to sin. Despite the dreary routine of their days, Jas has a unique way of experiencing her world: her face soft like cheese under her mother’s hands; the texture of green warts, like capers, on migrating toads in the village; the sound of “blush words” that aren’t in the Bible.
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati RoyThe author tells of small people with large hearts who pay the price for breaking the love rules.
Man Booker Prize winner
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati RoyThe international publishing sensation of 1997 -- translated into 18 languages -- a magical, sophisticated tour de force.
The God of Small Things heralds a voice so powerful and original that it burns itself into the reader's memory. Set mainly in Kerala, India, in 1969, it is the story of Rahel and her twin brother Estha, who learn that their whole world can change in a single day, that love and life can be lost in a moment. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they seek to craft a childhood for themselves amid the wreckage that constitutes their family.
Man Booker Prize winner
The Elected Member
by Bernice RubensIn this 1970 Booker Prize-winning novel, Norman is the clever one of a closely-knit Jewish family in London's East End. Infant prodigy, brilliant barrister, the apple of his parents' eyes-- until at 41 he becomes a drug addict, confined to his bedroom, at the mercy of his hallucinations and paranoia.
Midnight's Children
by Salman RushdieSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Winner of the Booker of Bookers
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
Man Booker Prize winner
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEThe &“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 inventedOne of The New York Times&’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic&’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years • One of Paste&’s Best Novels of the DecadeNamed 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 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.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.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?&“A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.&”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review &“A masterpiece.&”—Zadie Smith
Staying On
by Paul ScottIn this sequel to The Raj Quartet, Colonel Tusker and Lucy Smalley stay on in the hills of Pankot after Indian independence deprives them of their colonial status. Finally fed up with accommodating her husband, Lucy claims a degree of independence herself. Eloquent and hilarious, she and Tusker act out class tensions among the British of the Raj and give voice to the loneliness, rage, and stubborn affection in their marriage.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
Tomb of Sand
by Geetanjali ShreeA playful, feminist, and utterly original epic set in contemporary northern India, about a family and the inimitable octogenarian matriarch at its heart.
“A tale tells itself. It can be complete, but also incomplete, the way all tales are. This particular tale has a border and women who come and go as they please. Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself . . .”
Eighty-year-old Ma slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband. Despite her family’s cajoling, she refuses to leave her bed. Her responsible eldest son, Bade, and dutiful, Reebok-sporting daughter-in-law, Bahu, attend to Ma’s every need, while her favorite grandson, the cheerful and gregarious Sid, tries to lift her spirits with his guitar. But it is only after Sid’s younger brother—Serious Son, a young man pathologically incapable of laughing—brings his grandmother a sparkling golden cane covered with butterflies that things begin to change.
With a new lease on life thanks to the cane’s seemingly magical powers, Ma gets out of bed and embarks on a series of adventures that baffle even her unconventional feminist daughter, Beti. She ditches her cumbersome saris, develops a close friendship with a hijra, and sets off on a fateful journey that will turn the family’s understanding of themselves upside down.
Rich with fantastical elements, folklore, and exuberant wordplay, Geetanjali Shree’s magnificent novel explores timely and timeless topics, including Buddhism, global warming, feminism, Partition, gender binary, transcending borders, and the profound joys of life. Elegant, heartbreaking, and funny, it is a literary masterpiece that marks the American debut of an extraordinary writer.
Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Author’s name pronounced: Ghee-TAHN-juh-lee Shree
Saville
by David StoreyTowards the end of the third decade of the present century a coal hauler's cart, pulled by a large, dirt-grey horse, came into the narrow streets of the village of Saxton, a small mining community in the low hill-land of south Yorkshire. DAVID STOREY is the only three-time winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
SAVILLE, his newest novel, has garnered the Booker Award, Britain's most prestigious literary prize.
Shuggie Bain
by Douglas StuartWinner of the 2020 Booker Prize, this is the unforgettable story of Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy, the youngest of three children, who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland, taking care of his beloved mother Agnes. Agnes is a proud, beautiful woman who turns herself out like her idol Elizabeth Taylor, but she is an alcoholic, and spends most of the family's weekly benefits money on extra-strong lager and bottles of vodka. A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family and a queer childhood from a masterful novelist, one of the most talented debut writers of recent years. Included is Grove Press's Reading Group Guide with discussion questions for reading groups by Paula Cooper.
Last Orders
by Graham SwiftFour men gather in a London pub. They have taken it upon themselves to carry out the last orders of Jack Dodds, master butcher, and deliver his ashes to the sea. As they drive towards the fulfillment of their mission, their errand becomes an extraordinary journey into their collective and individual pasts. Braiding these men's voices, and that of Jack's widow, into a choir of sorrow and resentment, passion and regret, Swift creates a testament to a changing England and to enduring mortality. "Swift has involved us in real, lived lives...Quietly, but with conviction, he seeks to affirm the values of decency, loyalty, love."--New York Review of Books"A beautiful book...a novel that speaks profoundly of human need and tenderness. Even the most cynical will be warmed by it."--San Francisco Chronicle
Sacred Hunger
by Barry UnsworthA historical novel set in the eighteenth century, Sacred Hunger is a stunning, engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed in the British Empire as it entered fully into the slave trade and spread it throughout its colonies.
Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.
Man Booker Prize winner