Booker loves Rushdie
Salman Rushdie has scored a Booker hat trick. His 1980 novel Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize the year it was released, and also picked up a “Booker of Bookers” nod in 1993. And today, the same novel was unveiled as the winner of the “Best of the Booker” prize.
The Best of the Booker was decided by public voting – after a panel of judges chose six previous Booker winners to form the shortlist. Rushdie beat out Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur, and Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist.
Guardian blogger Sam Jordison argues today that the public made the right choice. And when the Canadian-free shortlist was unveiled a couple of months ago, Toronto writer (and Q&Q contributor) Flannery Dean offered some local perspective on the CBC Arts site.
