The Man Booker Prize marks its 50th anniversary this month with an unmissable festival at the Southbank Centre in London.
Launched in 1969, the prize aims to promote the best fiction by rewarding the best English novel of the year published in the UK.
A £50,000 prize will be awarded to the winner of the Man Booker Prize, while shortlisted authors are awarded £2,500 and a designer bound copy of their book in-keeping with the Man Booker Prize objective to increase readership for the best in literary fiction.
This year’s flagship event will run in partnership with the Southbank Centre, the UK’s largest arts centre and features the Fiction at its Finest Festival.
The festival, which kicked off yesterday and will end tomorrow, will run across the Southbank Centre’s 17-acre site in London.
This year’s panel of judges will be chaired by philosopher Kwame Appiah and include crime writer Val McDermid, cultural critic Leo Robson, feminist writer and critic Jacqueline Rose and artist and graphic designer Leanne Shapton.
In line with its anniversary celebrations, the Golden Man Booker Award has been cultivated to crown the best Man Booker Prize winning work of fiction from the last five decades of the prize.
The five finalist publications include In a Free State by V S Naipaul; Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively; The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.
Special broadcasts will air on BBC Four, BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking and BBC World Book Club, showcasing a broad spectrum of programmes around the anniversary and the Fiction at its Finest Festival.
For more information, visit www.themanbookerprize.com