'You do this or you die': how Ben Okri wrote The Famished Road

In our new film, Ben Okri, the first Black winner of the Booker Prize, explains how he had to create fresh techniques to tell a story rooted in his African childhood

Welcome to the online home of the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize, the leading literary awards for single works of fiction published in the UK in English

Original features from the Booker Library

Should Martin Amis have won the Booker Prize?

While the other members of his 1980s gang - Barnes, McEwan, Rushdie and Ishiguro - have all bagged a Booker and other awards, Amis remains relatively trophy-less. So why have the big literary prizes eluded him?

Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the 1993 film The Remains of the Day

How Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day changed the way I think about England

This quietly subversive novel showed how the English obsession with class colours our emotions, speech and interactions and made me look at the country I thought I knew with fresh eyes

How Fay Weldon's 'anti-publisher speech' became one of the Booker Prize's bombshell moments

As Chair of the 1983 Booker Prize judges, Fay Weldon had been expected to make a speech celebrating the year’s best fiction. Instead, she delivered a devastating attack on the publishing industry

Seeing G.: John Berger, the Black Panthers and the Booker, 50 years on

In this new film to mark the 50th anniversary of John Berger’s Booker win, Jo Hamya revisits the prize’s most controversial moment, reveals what happened to Berger’s prize money and explores the legacy and impact of his 1972 novel, G.

Reading recommendations from the Booker Library

My next Booker book: what our authors, judges and translators will be reading this year

We asked members of the Booker Prizes family - including several previous winners - to pick a single book from the Booker archive and tell us why they’re looking forward to reading it

What's the best Booker Prize screen adaptation?

Looking for your next high-quality box set or movie? More than 50 Booker Prize nominated titles have been adapted for the big and small screen - discover them all here

The best of Salman Rushdie: a guide to his Booker-nominated novels

Few writers are as synonymous with the Booker Prize as Salman Rushdie, with seven of his 12 adult novels having been nominated. Here’s our guide to his best books

Booker Prize New Year reading recommendations

Ten Booker-nominated books to inspire a fresh start

From life-changing decisions to existential meditations, these books will gently ease you into 2023 and help you turn over a new leaf

Learn more about our 2023 prizes

Meet the judges for the Booker Prize 2023

The judging panel for the Booker Prize 2023 will be chaired by Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan and features Mary Jean Chan, one of poetry’s rising stars, leading Shakespeare specialist James Shapiro, and two much-loved actors, Adjoa Andoh and Robert Webb. Find out more here

Meet the International Booker Prize 2023 judges

The panel of judges is chaired by the French-Moroccan novelist, Leila Slimani and includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times

Learn about the winner of the Booker Prize 2022

Shehan Karunatilaka's literary influences for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Ten books that led Shehan Karunatilaka to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

From classic sci-fi to interactive children’s books to previous Booker winners, we reflect on the novels that inspired the author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Shehan Karunatilaka interview: 'Sri Lankans specialise in gallows humour. It's our coping mechanism'

Reading Guide: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Read the 2022 winner: an extract from The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka on Kurt Vonnegut: ‘The genius I have robbed from the most is Uncle Kurt’

Watch the 2022 shortlist films

The story so far: Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office

The story so far: Lucy Barton recalls the moment she feared her first husband, William, would leave her - and how she eventually left him

The story so far: Jim and Ed, two detectives investigating a series of strange murders in Money, Mississippi, meet Mama Z, a local centenarian who has been compiling records of every lynching in the US

The story so far: As the Father of the Nation addresses a huge crowd in Jidada Square, a group of protestors rise up to call for the return of their country’s ‘disappeared’

The story so far: Joe Coppock, a solitary, partially-sighted child, explores the local countryside in a vivid dream

The story so far: Christmas 1985 in a small Irish town. Bill Furlong, a coalman, revisits the local convent with his delivery - and makes a shocking discovery

The story so far: Maali Almeida, a war photographer, has been killed. In the afterlife, he has ‘seven moons’ to find out who murdered him, while, in the real world, local detectives must first find the rest of his body

The story so far: Lucy Barton, a successful writer living in New York, remembers her daughter’s illness and the break-up of her first marriage

The story so far: Jim and Ed, two detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, are investigating a series of strange murders

The story so far: The Father of the Nation, an elderly, charismatic horse, is the ruler of the war-torn land of Jidada. Crowds gather as he arrives to address the masses

The story so far: Joe Coppock forges an unlikely friendship with a mysterious wanderer named Treacle Walker and is introduced to an ancient bog man, Thin Amren

The story so far: Coalman Bill Furlong visits a local convent and is disturbed by an encounter with a group of girls at its training school

Watch videos from the Booker Prize 2022 ceremony

Shehan Karunatilaka wins the Booker Prize 2022 for ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’

Shehan Karunatilaka in numbers

The number of years it took Shehan Karunatilaka to write Seven Moons

Years; the length of the Sri Lankan Civil War, against which the book is set

The age of Maali, the protagonist of Seven Moons, when he is murdered

386

The number of pages in Seven Moons

1989; the year in which Seven Moons is set

Karunatilaka’s age at the time of winning The Booker Prize 2022

The age when the author discovered he loved writing, thanks to Sesame Street and some crayons

The number of unfinished novels Karunatilaka is said to have written

The best pictures from the ceremony

Her Majesty The Queen Consort meets Dua Lipa ahead of the Booker Prize 2022 winner ceremony at the Roundhouse