‘Lost Booker Prize’ to be awarded for 1970 novel
LONDON – More than three decades after Iris Murdoch won Britain’s top literary award, and a decade after her death, she has a chance to win again.
The author is up against 21 other writers who published novels in English in 1970 for the “lost” Booker Prize.
The books were never considered for the prize at the time. The reason? The Booker was originally awarded for any book published in the previous year. But in 1971, it became a prize for the best novel published that year.
That meant that a raft of books published in 1970 were left out in the cold, and the Lost Man Booker Prize is an attempt to remedy the oversight.
“Our longlist demonstrates that 1970 was a remarkable year for fiction written in English,” Ion Trewin, the prizes’ literary director, said Monday. “Recognition for these novels and the eventual winner is long overdue.”
Murdoch’s “A Fairly Honourable Defeat” is up against 21 other works, including “The Fire Dwellers” byMargaret Laurence, Len Deighton‘s “Bomber,” “A Guilty Thing Surprised,” by Ruth Rendell, and “A Clubbable Woman,” by Reginald Hill. All the books on the list are still in print and available today.