The Booker prizewinners that never were
Gems ignored by the Booker.

Read Olivia Laing's blog here

Olivia Laing writing in The Observer,
Sunday September 14 2008

Unucky 13

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (1969)

We said: 'Fowles's stress on the value of love ... gives a personal urgency to what is certainly a remarkable performance.'

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury (1975)'An elegant display of comic determinism, as smart as they come.'

Money by Martin Amis (1984)'A brilliant, frightening novel ... devoid of such outworn properties as charm.'

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (1984)'Sinisterly powerful, stylish and authoritative.'

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1984)'A lavish, sumptuous invention.'

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985)'Something imposing in Jeanette Winterson's originality ensures that each of her themes will emerge without the least touch of staleness.'

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)'The ultimate feminist nightmare.'

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988)'There is about this massive undertaking, a folie de grandeur which sends its brilliant comic energy, its fierce satiric powers, and its unmatchable, demonic inventiveness plunging down, on melting wings, toward unreadability.'

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (1990)'Kureishi's picaresque coming-of-age saga makes the Seventies seem like the fin de siècle arriving 20 years early.'

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (1993)'Ripping yarns and serious thought rarely disturb each other in modern fiction, but Sebastian Faulks works the trick with alchemic guile.'

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993)'Manages to draw great wit and energy from its wasted souls.'

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1994)'Seth courts his readers with all the charms of his heroine's three suitors: with vigour and gallantry, with wit, intelligence and occasional frivolity... Without question, it works.'

White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)'Audaciously assured ... White Teeth squares up to the two questions which gnaw at the very roots of our modern condition: Who are we? Why are we here?'