Anthony Burgess’ sweeping historical fiction is a dramatic tour de force that often surprises and sometimes shocks, but never fails to entertain
The Booker Prize 1980
William Golding’s win was shaded by Anthony Burgess stating that he wouldn’t attend the ceremony unless he knew in advance that he had won. The judges refused to be swayed.
Golding’s Rites of Passage, the first part of his To the Ends of the Earth trilogy, won the Booker Prize fully 26 years after Lord of the Flies had made the author a household name and the text had become a school staple. His winning novel tells the story of goings-on on board a migrant ship to Australia in the 19th century and it too discussed mankind’s innate bestiality.
As Golding stepped up to collect the award in London, Burgess was busy across town, drowning his sorrows in the Savoy Hotel.
Rites of Passage
Winner of The Booker Prize 1980
- Published by
- Faber & Faber
The first book of William Golding’s Sea Trilogy is a haunting account of an epic sea journey, which profoundly affects all those who set sail on it
The shortlist
In J.L. Carr’s tale of survival and healing, a damaged veteran rediscovers the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War
By J.L. Carr
Anita Desai’s accomplished family drama explores how the unexplored crises of childhood can reveal new worlds - if courage can be found to face them
By Anita Desai
The first book of William Golding’s Sea Trilogy is a haunting account of an epic sea journey, which profoundly affects all those who set sail on it
Over the course of four decades a unique bond evolves between two very different women in this series of interweaving stories from Alice Munro
By Alice Munro
Four generations of two families struggle to deal with the after-effects of the Irish Civil War in Julia O’Faolain’s gripping and engaging novel
Barry Unsworth’s complex study of betrayal, paranoia, deception and fear, delivered by Pascali himself – an altogether untrustworthy narrator
