An old man with a nasty secret hopes to end his days peacefully, but Christopher Hope is not about to let that happen in this jet-black satire
The Booker Prize 1992
The year of double winners, a rule change, and chewed Booker Prize knuckles when the judges couldn’t separate Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
With the award ceremony dinner looming and the organisers’ nerves fraying, Victoria Glendinning’s panel eventually split the prize. It was, however, a compromise that suited no one and the prize committee decided that from then on only one book could win (until the 2019 judges decided otherwise).
Ondaatje’s novel went on to Oscars’ glory courtesy of Anthony Minghella’s film, while the always modest Unsworth reflected: ‘My book would still be here if I hadn’t won, it would still be as good – or as bad.’
The English Patient
Winner of The Booker Prize 1992
- Published by
- Bloomsbury
Set in 1945, Michael Ondaatje’s brilliant and moving historical fiction has been translated into 40 languages and turned into an Oscar-winning film
Sacred Hunger
Winner of The Booker Prize 1992
- Published by
- Hamish Hamilton
Barry Unsworth’s gripping historical novel about the Atlantic slave trade shared the Booker Prize 1992 with Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
The shortlist
Through his narrator’s stream of consciousness, Patrick McCabe portrays the descent into madness of a young killer in small-town Ireland in the 1960s
Ian McEwan’s brooding and occasionally sinister novel hints at how personal relationships can be beset by demons unleashed in wider human conflict
By Ian McEwan
Set in 1945, Michael Ondaatje’s brilliant and moving historical fiction has been translated into 40 languages and turned into an Oscar-winning film
Set in Normandy, Michèle Roberts’ richly atmospheric novel about deceit and hypocrisy resonates with the power possessed by long-held secrets
Barry Unsworth’s gripping historical novel about the Atlantic slave trade shared the Booker Prize 1992 with Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
