Booker Prize 2022

Context

Sri Lankan author, Shehan Karunatilaka has won Britain’s Booker Prize 2022 for fiction for his work “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”, about a journalist murdered amid the country’s sectarian strife.

What is the Booker Prize?

• The Booker Prize is one of the best-known literary awards for fiction writing in English, including both novels and collections of short stories.
• It was first awarded in 1969.
• Every year a panel of judges decides the best work of the year, with the criteria being that it must be written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.
• This panel of judges is picked from among eminent cultural historians, writers, professors, and novelists, and others from related fields.
• For the Booker Prize, the winner receives £50,000.

What about the International Booker Prize?

• The International Booker Prize began in 2005.
• A biennial prize initially, it was then awarded for a body of work available in English.
• In 2015, the rules of the International prize changed to make it an annual affair.
• The new rules stipulated that it will be awarded annually for a single book, written in another language and translated into English.
• The £50,000 prize money is divided equally between the author and translator each year.

Why is it called the ‘Booker’?

• The Booker Prize, from 1969 to 2001, was named simply after the Booker Group Limited – a British food wholesale operator that was its initial sponsor.
• The Man Group, an investment management firm based in the UK, began to sponsor the prize in 2002 and it thus came to be known as The Man Booker Prize.
• The Man Group ended their sponsorship in 2019.
• Crankstart, an American charitable foundation, has been the sponsor after that. 
• The prize name has changed back to the ‘Booker’ since then.