The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a highly prestigious literary award for the best novel of the year written by an author from a nation in the British commonwealth or from Ireland and Zimbabwe. 50,000 pounds is a lot of money so, of course, that’s a big part of the whole excitement surrounding the award. But the prize is also just so big-time that novelists count it a privilege to be featured on the longlist. Since it began in 1969, three Africans have won it. Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee who are both South African and Ben Okri who is Nigerian.
The 2012 shortlist is:
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber)
Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)
Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)
Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)
ethnocentric african October 01, 2012 23:14
Why do these people have to validate us all the time? Cant we have an African organization that determine the best book, author, article in the world? I was talking with a friend the other day. And we both agreed that it is time that an African beauty organization start a pageant that will endow a woman from any part of the world the title of most beautiful woman. It almost appears that that these people have fed into our brains that only they have power to judge universal beautiful. I am tired of seeing African organizations operating in literature or other fields deliver regional prices to people. They should be able to say "you are the most beautiful woman, best soccer player, or best scientist in the world"