What is the most important international booker prize in the field of literature? Who was the first Indian to win a prize? Which thread?
Rishika Singh
Explained: The Booker Prize, one of the most coveted literary awards in the world: Tomb of Sand, a novel translated from Hindi by author Gitanjali Sri, is the first Indian language book to win the International Booker Prize.
The novel ‘Red Tomb’, published in 2018, was translated by Daisy Rockwell and published in 2021 under the title ‘Tomb of Sand’.
The prize is one of the two annual Literary Awards presented by the Booker Prize Foundation, which aims to “promote the art and value of literature for the public good.”
The Foundation’s website states, “Whether the work is originally written in English (Booker Prize) or translated into English (International Booker Prize), awards are given on a global basis to honor fiction.”
What is the Booker Prize?
The Booker Prize is one of the best literary awards for fiction written in English, including collections of novels and short stories. It was first issued in 1969.
Each year the panel of judges determines the best work of the year. The work must have been written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The panel of judges will include eminent cultural historians, writers, professors and novelists, as well as selectors from related fields. This year the panel consisted of five judges.
The winner of the Booker Prize receives 50,000. The long list of previously published will feature about 12 works. This long list, also known as The ‘Booker Dozen’, will be announced in July this year, followed by a short list of six books in September. The winner will be announced in November 2022.
What is the International Booker Prize?
The International Booker Prize has been awarded since 2005. The prize, which was initially awarded every two years, was later awarded to several works, including translations into English, with Alice Monroe, Lydia Davis and Philip Roth being some of the early winners. In 2015, the rules of the International Booker Prize made it an annual prize. The new rules state that works written in another language and translated into English will be awarded annually to an outstanding book. The prize money of 50,000 is distributed equally between the teacher and the translator each year.
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Why is it called ‘Booker’?
The Booker Prize was named after Booker Group Ltd., a British food wholesaler who was its initial sponsor from 1969 to 2001. The Man Group, a UK-based investment management company, began funding the prize in 2002, making it known as the Man Booker Prize. The Man Group ended their sponsorship in 2019. Since then it has been a sponsor of the American charity Crankstart. Since then the prize name has changed again to ‘Booker’.
Who are some of the key winners?
Margaret Atwood (‘The Testaments’), Ann Martell (‘Life of Pi’) and Julian Barnes (‘The Sense of an Ending’) are the main winners of the coveted prize. Many Indian-origin writers have won the Booker Prize in the past, such as Arundhati Roy (‘The God of Small Things’), Salman Rushdie (‘Midnight’s Children’), Kiran Desai (‘The Inheritance of Law’) and Arvind Adiga (‘The White Tiger’). . Gitanjali Sri is currently the first Indian to win the International Booker Prize.
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