The Early Years |
by PH Newby (1918-1997)
Townrow, a fund distributor, is contacted by the widow of an old friend living in Cairo. Believing her husband to have been murdered she asks Townrow to come to Egypt.
Fast fact: PH Newby was given the Order of the British Empire for his work as managing director of the BBC.
First edition copies being offered for up to £714
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Bernice Rubens (1928-2004)
Child prodigy and the apple of his parents' eyes becomes a drug addict, confined to his bedroom at the mercy of his hallucinations.
Fast fact: Her 1962 novel, Madame Sousatzka was made into a film in 1988, with Shabana Azmi and Shirley MacLaine.
First edition copies being offered for up to £1,022 |
VS Naipaul (1932-Present)
Comprised of two novellas and a short-story, the book explores the theme of alienation.
Fast fact: Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.
First edition copies being offered for up to £1,479 |
1972 – G
John Berger (1926-Present)
Set in pre-First World War Europe, the novel’s protagonist Casanova-like lover of women gradually comes to political consciousness after misadventures across the continent.
Fast fact: When accepting the Booker award Berger made a point of donating half his cash prize to the Black Panther Party in Britain.
First edition copies being offered for up to £868
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The Eighties
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William Golding (1911 – 1993)
In the cabin of an ancient, stinking warship bound for Australia, a man writes a journal to entertain his godfather back in England. With wit and disdain he records mounting tensions on board, as an obsequious clergyman attracts the animosity of the tyrannical captain and surly crew.
Fast fact: Golding served in WWII and participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day.
First edition copies being offered for up to £725
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Salman Rushdie (1947 – Present)
1,001 children born at the midnight hour of India's independence each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent the protagonist finds himself mysteriously 'handcuffed to history' by the coincidence.
Fast fact: In 1999, Rushdie had an operation to correct a tendon condition that was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes.
First edition copies being offered for up to £2,287
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JM Coetzee (1940 – Present)
In an imagined near future of a South Africa torn by civil war, a simple gardener named Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity.
Fast fact: He is known as reclusive and eschews publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person.
First edition copies being offered for up to £875 |
Keri Hulme (1947 – Present)
The story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Maori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world.
Fast fact: Hulme is a patron of the Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand, which ironically would make her ineligible to win any future Bookers should they succeed.
First edition copies being offered for up to £500
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The Nineties
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Michael Ondaatje (1943 – Present)
Tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as the Second World War ends.
Fast fact: After winning the Booker Ondaatje’s story was turned into a film which won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
First edition copies being offered for up to £507
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Roddy Doyle (1958 – Present)
The book describes the world of 10-year-old Paddy Clarke, growing up in Barrytown, north Dublin. From fun and adventure on the streets, boredom in the classroom to increasing isolation at home, "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" is the story of a boy who sees everything but understands less and less.
Fast fact: Doyle’s 1987 novel The Commitments was not only turned into a movie but a band with some of the film’s actors, and they still tour.
First edition copies being offered for up to £191
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James Kelman (1946 – Present)
Sammy's had a bad week - his wallet's gone, along with his new shoes, he's been arrested then beaten up by the police and thrown out on the street - and he's just gone blind. He remembers a row with his girlfriend, but she seems to have disappeared. Things aren't looking too good for Sammy and his problems have hardly begun.
Fast fact: One of the judges choosing the 1994 Booker, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, threatened to resign if Kelman won, and upon the book was granted the prize she stormed off the panel, saying, "Frankly, it's crap."
First edition copies being offered for up to £101 |
Arundhati Roy (1961 – Present)
The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family.
Fast fact: The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Roy. She has since devoted herself solely to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes, although in early 2007 she announced that she would start work on a second novel.
First edition copies being offered for up to £975
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Recent Years
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Margaret Atwood (1939 – Present)
Iris Griffen takes up her pen to record the secret history of her family, the romantic melodrama of its decline and fall between the two World Wars.
Fast fact: Atwood invented the "LongPen" billed as "the world's first long distance signing device.
First edition copies being offered for up to £100 |
Peter Carey (1943 – Present)
A historical novel based around the life of Australia's most infamous bushranger Ned Kelly.
Fast fact: The novel is written in a distinctive vernacular style, with little in the way of punctuation or grammar.
First edition copies being offered for up to £225
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Yann Martel (1963 – Present)
The plot concerns the oceanic wanderings of a lost boy, the young and eager Piscine Patel of the title (Pi). After a colourful and loving upbringing in gorgeously-hued India, the Muslim-Christian-animistic Pi sets off for a fresh start in Canada.
Fast fact: Yann Martel currently sends one book every two weeks to the Prime Minister of Canada. He chronicles the project on his blog WhatIsStephenHarperReading.ca.
First edition copies being offered for up to £1,650 |
John Banville (1945 – Present)
The story is told by Max Morden, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those whom he loved as a child and as an adult.
Fast fact: Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990.
First edition copies being offered for up to £375
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