Beauty Wins the Booker Prize

Alan Hollinghurst has been declared winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Line of Beauty.

Read the BBC News article, What Price a Booker Prize Winner?, about how the prize means big bucks for its winners.

You can vote for your favourite of the 2004 Booker shortlist at the official website: The 2004 People's Prize.

The results, so far, are:

Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor 34.53% (308)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 33.3% (297)

I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward 11.21% (100)

The Master by Colm Toibin 8.07% (72)

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 7.51% (67)

The Electric Michaelangelo by Sarah Hall 5.38% (48)

And if you're curious about past winners of the Booker, check out the complete list below (I know of people who don't read anything but award-winning novels, and those who use these lists to help them decide what books to buy).

Past Winners:

2003 Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

2002 Life of Pi by Yann Martel

2001 True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

2000 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

1999 Disgrace by J M Coetzee

1998 Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

1997 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy

1996 Last Orders by Graham Swift

1995 The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

1994 How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman

1993 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

1992 The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje & Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

1991 The Famished Road by Ben Okri

1990 Possession by A S Byatt

1989 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

1988 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

1987 Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

1986 The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis

1985 The Bone People by Keri Hulme

1984 Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

1983 Life & Times of Michael K by J M Coetzee

1982 Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark

1981 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

1980 Rites of Passage by William Golding

1979 Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

1978 The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

1977 Staying On by Paul Scott

1976 Saville by David Storey

1975 Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

1974 The Conversationist by Nadine Gordimer & Holiday by Stanley Middleton

1973 The Siege of Krishnapur by J G Farrell

1972 G by John Berger

1971 In a Free State by V S Naipaul

1970 The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens

1969 Something to Answer For by P H Newby

Comments

[Jaaz]

Have you got the Mennyms series by Silvia Waugn? If you can get hold of it can you please put it on your website? Contact me as soon as possible please. Thank you.

[Subtext Whore]

Henry James seems very fashionable amongst the literati here in Blighty. Hollinghurst's winning book also deals with him, as does "Author! Author!" by David Lodge - which I'm hoping to read by the end of the year. Apparently it's exactly the same kind of book as The Master but Lodge didn't realise his idea coincided with Tóibín's until it was too late (more here). It'll be interesting to read it from a heterosexual's POV anyway, because I think Tóibín really did himself an injury by applying aspects of his own sexuality to his book. :-)

[Daphne]

Hi Lee! I'm looking forward to reading "The Master", as I do like H James, especially "The Turn of the Screw" and "Portrait of a Lady". Looking at the Past Winners list, I see that the last Booker winner I read was "Amsterdam", which did not impress me in the least.

[Subtext Whore]

LOL. Alan Hollinghurst second from bottom in the readers vote. ;-) I suppose it depends who read what though. Sarah Hall certainly doesn't deserve to be at the bottom but then none of them probably do. After reading TEM, I'm convinced Hall is going to endure very well. She'll be on the classics shelves in a hundred years, filed just next to Hardy...whose prose she can certainly equal.

The official top-three (selected just 35 minutes before the ceremony) were: A Line of Beauty, Cloud Atlas and The Master. (I've just reviewed That Master on my site in fact.)

(Sorry, I'm waffling again. The Booker affects me like that.) ;-)