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The Man Booker Prize 2007

Anne Enright, 2007
Winner
Shortlist
Longlist

Another Irish winner, disgruntled bookies, and more chat as to what constitutes a novel. No shortlisted book can be a surprise winner but Anne Enright’s The Gathering came close.

In the lead up to Enright’s win, the issued that aerated the literary world was whether Ian McEwan’s shortlisted On Chesil Beach was really a novel. At a svelte 40,000 words was it in fact a novella and so ineligible? No, said the judges.

Not that it mattered, despite huge sales and the tag of favourite, it was pipped in what the chair of judges, Howard Davies, called a ‘tight’ contest. Enright cautioned would-be readers that if they wanted a feel-good novel ‘they shouldn’t really pick up my book’.
 

The Gathering
The Gathering

The Gathering

Winner of The Booker Prize 2007

Published by
Jonathan Cape
A family epic about love and disappointment, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye

The shortlist

Darkmans
Nicola Barker’s startling visionary narrative. If history is just a sick joke that keeps repeating itself, then who exactly is telling it - and why?
The Gathering
Prize winner
A family epic about love and disappointment, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye
Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones celebrates the inspirational power of fiction in his moving story about a young girl on a war-torn island in the South Pacific
On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan’s devastating novel about ways in which the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken
Animal's People
Indra Sinha’s portrait of a survivor is a stunningly humane work of storytelling that takes us right to the heart of contemporary India

The longlist

The 2007 judges