Man Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over four decades. The Man Booker International Prize rewards the finest in fiction, highlighting great books to readers.

As of 2016, the Man Booker International Prize will be awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK.

The symmetrical relationship between the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker International Prize will ensure that the ‘Man Booker’ can now honour fiction on a global basis. Each prize has the power to transform the winner’s career and both the Man Booker Prize and Man Booker International are sponsored by Man Group.

Man Group was recognised as a partner who mirrored the quality, integrity and longevity of the Booker Prize. A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with great anticipation and fanfare. It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in the shortlist or even to be nominated for the "longlist," says hemanbookerprize.com.

The prize was originally known as the Booker–McConnell Prize, after the company Booker, McConnell Ltd began sponsoring the event in 1968; it became commonly known as the "Booker Prize" or simply "the Booker". When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain "Booker" as part of the official title of the prize.

The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder.[5] The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £21,000, and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world's richest literary prizes.

P H Newby won the prize first in 1969 for his 'Something to Answer For.' In 1970, Bernice Rubens became the first woman to win the Booker Prize, for The Elected Member. Alice Munro has a unique place in Booker Prize history; The Beggar Maid is the only short story collection to have been shortlisted in 1980, according to Wikipedia.