A new name is being sought for the British Booker Prize trophy, which has been awarded again after a long break.
Harry Nutt
King Consort Camilla presents winner Shehan Karunatilaka with the 2022 Booker Trophy for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.Toby Melville/AP
When it comes to boasting and praising, the educated person likes to fall back on classical forms, noble, slender figures that stretch a laurel wreath or something similar in the air. Many sports trophies look like this, heroic figures that deliberately or not recall the Riefenstahl aesthetic. Hairless-muscled bodies that stretch to the Olympics, to the light, to the glory, you name it.
The winner of the Booker Prize, the most important award for a literary work from the British region, has long been honored with a tongue-in-cheek, modified form. A number of Booker winners went on to receive Nobel Prizes, including Nadine Gordimer, VS Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro. A great many more authors who would have deserved the Nobel honors and the money that went with them could at least console themselves with the Booker title, such as Salman Rushdie, Iris Murdoch and Michael Ondaatje, whose “English Patient” was popularized by Hollywood filming is still vividly before the eyes. The keyword “English” requires an explanation: from 1969 to 2013 the Booker Prize was reserved exclusively for authors from the Commonwealth, Northern Ireland, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Since 2018, novels published in Ireland can also be considered.
It’s a bit reminiscent of the Jules Rimet Cup
A trophy that has been part of the award for a long time was awarded to Shehan Karunatilaka for the first time in 2022 after a long break. The character was remembered because its creator, the Polish children’s book author and illustrator Jan Pieńkowski, had died shortly before.
Traditions can be broken, but they don’t die. And so the foundation that awards the Booker Prize has decided to regularly award the figure, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Jules Rimet Cup and was once used to honor soccer world champions.
Discussed and decided. Now a name is needed. The golden figure, which is holding a similar bowl, leans its body a little to the side – perhaps because of the weight, possibly also to critically weigh the bowl’s contents. Perhaps Ophelia would be appropriate, remembering Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” – or a line from Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row”, where it is not very friendly that Ophelia already looks like an old woman on her 22nd birthday. Hm. Still better than a suggestion that the jury will presumably reach from Berlin: “Goldelse”. Proposals can be submitted until January 27th. Among other things, the winner will receive a Montegrappa Zero fountain pen worth the equivalent of 730 euros.