The judges for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
are announced today, Thursday 11 December 2014.
The five 2015 judges are: Michael Wood (Chair),
Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton; Ellah
Allfrey, journalist and Deputy Chair of the Council of the Caine Prize; John
Burnside, prize-winning poet; Sam Leith, author and Literary Editor
at The Spectator and Frances Osborne, author and biographer. None
of these have previously been a member of a Man Booker Prize judging panel, and
they bring together a wide knowledge of international literature.
2015 is the 47th year of the prize, which
was launched in 1969.The 2015 judging panel will be looking for the best novel
of the year, selected from entries published in the UK between 1 October 2014
and 30 September 2015.
Following a change in the rules introduced in 2014,
the prize is now open to writers of any nationality, published in the UK and
originally written in English. Last year 154 books were submitted, of which 44
titles were by authors who were eligible under the new rule changes.
Michael Wood comments on behalf of the judging panel:
‘Talking about novels is almost as much fun as reading
them, and we're all greatly looking forward to this double pleasure. It's a
privilege to be a member of this very distinguished panel and to be part of the
deliberations for the award of the Man Booker Prize, surely the most exciting and
the most closely followed literary event in the English-speaking world. I
believe some of the books are already waiting for us.’
Australian writer Richard Flanagan was the first to
win the prize under the new rules. His novel The Narrow Road to the Deep
North sold over 10,000 hardback copies in the week that followed his win, a
3,141% sales increase on the week before. The Narrow Road to the Deep North shot
straight to No. 1 on iBookstore and Amazon, and Random House immediately
ordered a reprint of 100,000 extra copies. Sales for the novel went on to
eclipse the sum total of all Flanagan’s other book sales in the past decade.
Following his Man Booker win in October 2014,
Australian author Richard Flanagan said that he was astonished at ‘being so honoured’,
remarking: ‘novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an
explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.’
The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 12 or 13 books will be
announced in August 2015 and the shortlist of six books in early September
2015. The winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on
13 October 2015, at an awards ceremony at London’s Guildhall, broadcast live by
the BBC.
The judges will read submissions both in hard copy and
using iPad Airs, donated by Apple.
www.themanbookerprize.com
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