The Bookseller.com

11th October 2008

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The best of Booker

10.03.08

The Booker Prize is a characteristically British combination of a great sporting fixture and a cultural jamboree, writes Robert McCrum in his weekly Observer column. "Autumn after autumn, it stirs up literary debate and makes people who would otherwise go to bed with a biography or a thriller open a novel, probably by someone they've never heard of. One of the Booker's best functions has been to promote a national conversation about what we look for in new fiction and what we think its purposes might be."

"Now the Booker is at it again with a 40th-birthday promotion. Not for the first time, either; in 1993, a panel of three ex-Booker chairs chose Midnight's Children as the Booker of Bookers. Never let it be said that the prize lacks confidence in its mission or its role as Britain's Goncourt/Pulitzer."

Guardian

The Booker Prize