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Booker Prize, 6 Books

The Best of the Booker was a one-time award given in 2008 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize. The prize considered all 41 past Booker-winning novels since 1968, with a shortlist of six titles selected by a panel including novelist Victoria Glendinning, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and Professor John Mullan. Notable nominees included two-time Booker winners Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee. The public chose Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children as the winner, a novel that had previously won both the 1981 Booker and the 1993 Booker of Bookers, awarded for the prize’s 25th anniversary.

2 . Who actually picked the winner?
Unlike a normal Booker year, the panel’s work stopped at the shortlist stage. From 12 May until early July the international reading public voted online (via the Man Booker website and partner media sites). Roughly 8,000 readers cast ballots; 36 % of them chose Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
theguardian.com
reuters.com

The result was revealed on 10 July 2008 at the London Literature Festival on the South Bank, where Rushdie’s sons accepted the glass trophy on his behalf.
en.wikipedia.org

Key take-away: in the 40th-anniversary “Best of the Booker,” the panel curated quality, while the public delivered the final verdict, making Midnight’s Children the only novel to have won the main Booker (1981), the 25th-anniversary “Booker of Bookers” (1993), and this 40-year crown.

This list was originally published in 2008 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.