Booker Prize

Booker Prize, also known as the Man Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary prize, and one of the most important literary awards in the English-speaking world. The Booker Prize was established in 1969 to reward outstanding literary achievement, raise the stature of authors with the public, and increase the sales of books.

The prize is annually awarded to the best full-length novel written in the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, and published in the preceding 12 months. A charity called the Booker Prize Foundation administers the prize and selects a panel of judges—usually five in number—to select each year’s prizewinner. The judges, who include prominent critics, authors, publishers, and academics, typically read about 130 novels submitted by publishers. They then draw up a short list, generally of six titles, from which they choose a winner.

The Man Group, a financial-services conglomerate, assumed sponsorship of the prize for a five-year period, beginning in 2002, and renamed it the Man Booker Prize. The prize was originally sponsored by Booker McConnell, a multinational group that had a publishing division.