Kingsley Amis won the 1986 Booker for The Old Devils, which is considered by many, including his son and fellow author Martin, to be his masterpiece
The Booker Prize 1986
Kingsley Amis, a two-time shortlistee, became the prize’s biggest fan when The Old Devils triumphed. The award, he decided, ‘was a wonderful indication of literary merit’
Amis’s win raised many an eyebrow not just because it contained high levels of comedy but because the author was widely assumed to have passed his peak and become something of a caricature, fuelled by drink and misogyny.
Four of the five judges were women and they clearly saw beyond any personal quirks to a book about a group of bibulous elderly Welsh friends that is unsparing about the indignities of age but shot through with warmth and an unsuspected faith in the power of love.
The Old Devils
Winner of The Booker Prize 1986
- Published by
- Hutchinson
Kingsley Amis won the 1986 Booker for The Old Devils, which is considered by many, including his son and fellow author Martin, to be his masterpiece
The shortlist
In Margaret Atwood’s feminist dystopian classic, nothing happens ‘that hasn’t already happened at some time or another’
Paul Bailey’s novel about shifting family relationships, loss and bereavement is surprisingly sad and remarkably funny in equal measure
By Paul Bailey
The second volume of Robertson Davies’ Cornish Trilogy explores the complicated life and hidden talents of eccentric art collector Francis Cornish
Kazuo Ishiguro examines guilt, truth and ageing through the highly subjective reminiscences of a retired painter in post-war Japan
Timothy Mo’s sweeping historical novel is set on the China coast in the 1830s, before and during the 19th-century Opium Wars
By Timothy Mo
