Facts about Booker Prize History
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Booker Prize shortlists have grown from five finalists to thirteen nominees as of 2022, expanding the competition's scope while maintaining its prestige.
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Four Booker Prize winners have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: William Golding, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Doris Lessing, spanning from 1983 to 2017.
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Anne Michaels became the first Canadian author to win the Booker Prize twice, earning the award in 1996 for Fugitive Pieces and again in 2022 for Held.
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Between 1969 and 2018, only 3 Booker Prize winners went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, with Ishiguro, Golding, and Coetzee comprising this exclusive group.
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Yann Martel's Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002, becoming the only novel featuring a tiger as a central character to receive the award.
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Penelope Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize in 1979 at age 77 for Offshore, becoming the oldest debut novelist to receive the award.
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Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things became the first novel by an Indian author to win the Booker Prize when it triumphed in 1997.
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Kazuo Ishiguro won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, later winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, making him one of only three Booker laureates to receive the Nobel.
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The Booker Prize expanded its eligibility in 2019 to include American authors for the first time, reflecting a shift from its original restriction to Commonwealth and Irish writers.
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Hilary Mantel became the first author to win the Booker Prize three times, claiming victories in 1992, 2009, and 2012 for Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher respectively.
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Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin won the Booker Prize in 2000, making her the first Canadian-born author to receive the award.
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Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was later named the best Booker Prize winner in the award's first fifty years during its 2019 anniversary celebration.
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In 1969, the Booker Prize was first awarded to P.H. Newby for his novel The Siege, establishing what would become the most prestigious English-language fiction award.