THE BOOKER’S FORGOTTEN YEAR

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, novels published in 1970 did not get a chance to compete for the Booker Prize for Fiction due to a change of rules. However, forty years later, the Man Booker Prize Committee have decided to remedy this oversight.

Here then are the 22 novels longlisted for the LOST Booker Prize for Fiction which will be announced sometime in May 2010. Half the authors contending for the prize are now dead, although all the novels are surprisingly still in print today. A shortlist of six novels will be announced in March 2010. The winner will be chosen based on the results of a public voting through the Man Booker Prize website.

J.G. Farrell won the Booker Prize in 1973 for The Siege of Krishnapur. Iris Murdoch won it in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea. There are two Australian writers in the running for the prize: Shirley Hazzard and Nobel laureate Patrick White.

1. The Hand Reared Boy / Brian Aldiss
2. A Little of What You Fancy? / H.E. Bates
3. The Birds on the Trees / Nina Bawden
4. A Place in England / Melvyn Bragg
5. Down All the Days / Christy Brown
6. Bomber / Len Deighton
7. Troubles / J.G. Farrell
8. The Circle / Elaine Feinstein
9. The Bay of Noon / Shirley Hazzard
10. A Clubbable Woman / Reginald Hill
11. I’m the King of the Castle / Susan Hill
12. A Domestic Animal / Francis King
13. The Fire Dwellers / Margaret Laurence
14. Out of the Shelter / David Lodge
15. A Fairly Honourable Defeat / Iris Murdoch
16. Fireflies / Shiva Naipaul
17. Master and Commander / Patrick O’Brian
18. Head to Toe / Joe Orton
19. Fire from Heaven / Mary Renault
20. A Guilty Thing Surprised / Ruth Rendell
21. The Driver’s Seat / Muriel Spark
22. The Vivisector / Patrick White