In 1969 The Booker Prize was born, it was renamed The Man Booker Prize in 2002 until 2019 when it returned to The Booker Prize. Since its inception, 35 men and 18 women have won the prize, and four authors have won more than once - Peter Caret, J. M. Coetzee, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. The award initially awarded £5,000 to its winners, the prize fund doubled in 1978 to £10,000 and today the winner receives £50,000 - Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
Discover the longlist of this years Booker Prize, and all the previous winners below and build an awardwinning bookshelf.
A searing satire set amid the murderous mayhem of Sri Lanka beset by civil war Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka. Ten years after his prizewinning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka's foremost authors, Karunatilaka is back with a rip-roaring epic, full of mordant wit and disturbing truths.