Bringing back the Booker year that got away

Published on Sunday 31 January 2010 21:32

THEY were the Bookers that slipped off the shelf. A host of celebrated novelists are in the running for a special Lost Man Booker Prize for works which were published in 1970 and judged ineligible due to a change in the rules.

Ruth Rendall, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch and HE Bates are among the novelists whose books are in the running for the literary prize.

In 1971, two years after the prestigious Booker Prize was launched, it ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. The date on which the award was given was also moved from April to November, creating a gap when a wealth of fiction published in 1970 could not be eligible for consideration.

Prize organisers decided to redress the balance 40 years on, with the celebratory award. They appointed a panel of three judges – all of whom were born in or around 1970 – to select a shortlist of six novels from the longlist of 23 books. The judges are journalist and critic Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader Katie Derham and the poet and novelist Tobias Hill. Ion Trewin, literary director of the Man Booker Prizes, said: "Our longlist demonstrates that 1970 was a remarkable year for fiction written in English. Recognition for these novels and the eventual winner is thus long overdue."

The list includes distinguished writers whose books stood the test of time including JG Farrell, whose The Siege of Krishnapur won the prize in 1973 and Iris Murdoch, whose The Sea, The Sea won in 1978 and whose novels were shortlisted in four other years.

David Lodge was shortlisted in 1984 and 1988 and chaired the prize in 1989; Muriel Spark was shortlisted in 1969 and in 1981; Nina Bawden was shortlisted in 1987; and Susan Hill was shortlisted in 1972.

Rendell is longlisted for A Guilty Thing Surprised, Orton for Head To Toe, Murdoch for A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Lord Bragg for A Place In England and Bates for A Little Of What You Fancy?

The Lost Man Booker Prize is the brainchild of Peter Straus, honorary archivist to the Booker Prize Foundation. He said: "I noticed that when Robertson Davies's Fifth Business was first published it carried encomiums from Saul Bellow and John Fowles both of whom judged the 1971 Booker Prize. However, judges for 1971 said it had not been considered or submitted.

"This led to an investigation which concluded that a year had been excluded. I am delighted that, even in a Darwinian way, this year, with so many extraordinary novels, can now be covered by the Man Booker Prize."

The shortlist will be announced in March and, as with the Best of the Booker in 2008, the public will decide the winner by voting via the Prize website. The overall winner will be announced in May.

This is the third celebratory award for the prize. The first was the Booker of Bookers in 1993 – the 25th anniversary. Then in 2008 there was the Best of the Booker to mark the 40th anniversary. Salman Rush-die's Midnight's Children won both.

The 23 longlisted books, which remain generally available, are Brian Aldiss's The Hand Reared Boy; HE Bates's A Little Of What You Fancy?; Nina Bawden's The Birds On The Trees; Lord Melvyn Bragg's A Place In England; Christy Brown's Down All The Days; Robertson Davies's Fifth Business; Len Deighton's Bomber; JG Farrell's Troubles; Elaine Feinstein's The Circle; Shirley Hazzard's The Bay Of Noon; Reginald Hill's A Clubbable Woman; Susan Hill's I'm The King Of The Castle; Francis King's A Domestic Animal; Margaret Laurence's The Fire Dwellers; David Lodge's Out Of The Shelter; Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honour-able Defeat; Shiva Naipaul's Fireflies; Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander; Joe Orton's Head To Toe; Mary Renault's Fire From Heaven; Ruth Rendell's A Guilty Thing Surprised; Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat; and Patrick White's The Vivisector.

Some of the celebrated works frozen out by the rules

A Place In England, by Melvyn Bragg

This was the second part of Bragg's Cumbrian Trilogy. The story is set predominantly in Thurston from the 1920s to the 1960s, and follows the life of Joseph Tallentire, a labourer, footman, and eventually publican.

Down All The Days, by Christy Brown

Written 13 years after My Left Foot, this was the second autobiographical novel by the disabled author set in Dublin during the 1940s and 1950s.

Head to Toe, by Joe Orton

Published three years after the author was murdered, Head to Toe is a novel of extraordinary surrealism by the celebrated playwright.

Bomber, by Len Deighton

Now celebrated as a classic documentary war novel, Bomber follows the progress of an Allied air raid on Germany through a period of 24 hours in the summer of 1943.

The Hand Reared Boy by Brian Aldiss

The story of a soldier in the Royal Mendip Borderers and how he copes when the regiment is posted to the Burmese Front.

Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies

A memoir-style novel, written by a fictional narrator, Dunstan Ramsay, a recently retired teacher who sets out to prove he had a meaningful life.

The Driver's Seat, by Muriel Spark

Described by the author as a "whydunnit", this is a novella about a young woman who travels to Naples in search of her own death. Readers learn that she will be murdered in the third chapter. Advertised at the time as a "metaphysical shocker" it was among the author's favourite works and was later turned into a film called Identikit starring Elizabeth Taylor.