Author Geetanjali Shree’s translated Hindi novel, Tomb of Sand, became the first Indian language book to win the International Booker Prize.

Note: Such topics hold very little relevance for CSE prelims. However, last year experience make such topics more uncertain. Still such topics hold relevance for other exams such as CAPF and state PSCs.

What is the Booker Prize?

• The Booker Prize is one of the best-known literary awards for fiction writing in English, including both novels and collections of short stories.
• It was first awarded in 1969.
• Every year a panel of judges decides the best work of the year, with the criteria being that it must be written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.
• This panel of judges is picked from among eminent cultural historians, writers, professors, and novelists, and others from related fields.
• For the Booker Prize, the winner receives £50,000.

About the book

• The 2018 novel titled ‘Ret Samadhi’ was translated by Daisy Rockwell and published as ‘Tomb of Sand’ in 2021.
• The prize is one of two literary awards given out annually by the Booker Prize Foundation, a charity whose stated aim is to “promote the art and value of literature for the public benefit”.

What about the International Booker Prize?

• The International Booker Prize began in 2005.
• A biennial prize initially, it was then awarded for a body of work available in English, including translations, with Alice Munro, Lydia Davis and Philip Roth becoming some of the early winners.
• In 2015, the rules of the International prize changed to make it an annual affair.
• The new rules stipulated that it will be awarded annually for a single book, written in another language and translated into English.
• The £50,000 prize money is divided equally between the author and translator each year.

Why is it called the ‘Booker’?

• The Booker Prize, from 1969 to 2001, was named simply after the Booker Group Limited – a British food wholesale operator that was its initial sponsor.
• The Man Group, an investment management firm based in the UK, began to sponsor the prize in 2002 and it thus came to be known as The Man Booker Prize.
• The Man Group ended their sponsorship in 2019.
• Crankstart, an American charitable foundation, has been the sponsor after that. The prize name has changed back to the ‘Booker’ since then.

Who have been some prominent winners?

• Prominent winners of the coveted prize include Margaret Atwood (‘The Testaments’), Yann Martel (‘Life of Pi’), and Julian Barnes (‘The Sense of an Ending’).
• Many Indian-origin writers have won the Booker in the past, such as Arundhati Roy (‘The God of Small Things’), Salman Rushdie (‘Midnight’s Children’), Kiran Desai (‘The Inheritance of Loss’), and Aravind Adiga (‘The White Tiger’).
• Shree is the first Indian to win an international prize.

UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024

Attend Now