And the winner is...

The 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction has been awarded to Howard Jacobson for his novel The Finkler Question.

From the press release.

"London author and columnist Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for the prize, in 2006 for Kalooki Nights and in 2002 for Who's Sorry Now, but has never before been shortlisted.

The Finkler Question is a novel about love, loss and male friendship, and explores what it means to be Jewish today.

Said to have ‘some of the wittiest, most poignant and sharply intelligent comic prose in the English language', The Finkler Question has been described as ‘wonderful' and ‘richly satisfying' and as a novel of ‘full of wit, warmth, intelligence, human feeling and understanding'."

Reserve The Finkler Question here.

Alice Munro wins Man Booker International prize

Alice Munro has been announced as winner of the third Man Booker International Prize.

The Man Booker International Prize is worth £60,000 to the winner and is awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It was first awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005 and then to Chinua Achebe in 2007.

Munro is best known for her short stories and is one of Canada's most celebrated writers.
Her latest collection of short stories, Too Much Happiness, will be published in October 2009.

The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2009 is: Jane Smiley, writer; Amit Chaudhuri, writer, academic and musician; and writer, film script writer and essayist, Andrey Kurkov.

The panel made the following comment on the winner:
"Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before."

To read the rest of the press release and more about the Man Booker International Prize click here.

To check the library catalogue for Alice Munro's books click here.

The Man Booker International Prize 2009 - Finalists announced.

The Man Booker International Prize recognises one writer for their achievement in fiction.

14 authors from 12 different countries are contenders for the third Man Booker International Prize.

They are:

Peter Carey (Australia)

Evan S. Connell (USA)

Mahasweta Devi (India)

E.L. Doctorow (USA)

James Kelman (UK)

Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

Arnošt Lustig (Czechoslovakia)

Alice Munro (Canada)

V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)

Joyce Carol Oates (USA)

Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)

Ngugi Wa Thiong’O (Kenya)

Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)

Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.

The winner is chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel; there are no submissions from publishers. Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe won the 2007 prize and Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare won the inaugural prize in 2005 and went on to gain worldwide recognition for his work.

In addition, there is a separate prize for translation and, if applicable, the winner can choose a translator of his or her work into English to receive a prize of £15,000.

The Man Booker International Prize echos and reinforces the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that literary excellence will be its sole focus.

The Man Booker International Prize is significantly different from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlights one writer's overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.

In seeking out literary excellence the judges consider a writer's body of work rather than a single novel.

The winner will be announced in May.