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Golden Man Booker Award Announced for 50th Anniversary Celebration

As part of it's 50th anniversary celebration, the Booker Prize Foundation has announced the launch of the Golden Man Booker Award. The prize will crown one book out of 51 past Man Booker Prize winners as the best book published in the last 50 years.

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker Prize, the literary award widely regarded as the most prestigious in the English-speaking world. To commemorate the semi-centennial, the Booker Prize foundation has plans for a number of global activities—literary festivals, to draw attention to the history of the award. Among these initiatives is the awarding of the first ever Golden Man Booker Prize. It will crown one work the single best work of fiction published since the award’s inception in 1969. The fifty-one winners from the half-century history of the prize will all now be in contention for the Golden Man Booker, whose authors include the likes of George Saunders, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood. These books will be judged by a panel of five judges who will each read selections from one decade.
  • Hollie McNish: 2010s
  • Simon Mayo: 2000s
  • Kamila Shamsie: 1990s
  • Lemn Sissay: 1980s
  • Robert McCrum: 1970s Each judge will the work they deem the best from their selection, forming the “Golden Five” shortlist whose contents will be announced at the Hay Festival on May 26th. The list will then be turned over to the public. An online voting platform will run on the Man Booker website from May 26th through June 25th. The overall winner will be crowned the recipient of the Golden Man Booker prize at the Man Booker Festival on July 8, 2018; the festival will run from July 6–July 8 and will take place in London’s Southbank Centre. A list of the numerous literary festival partnerships and collaborations as well as details on the full Man Booker Festival program will be made available in the coming months. Revisit some exceptional Man Booker-nominated titles here.