
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.’
Winner The Booker Prize 1992
Winner The Booker Prize 1992
By Ian McEwan