What is the Literary Booker Prize?

This article is part of a blog series highlighting each book award to learn more about what each of them means. Check out more about this blog series and other posts included here.

What is the Booker Prize? This book award is for novels published explicitly in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The book must also be written in the English language but additionally has a sister award for books that have been translated into English. 

The Booker Prize was named after the company Booker, McConnell, who sponsored the prize. 

The prize trophy was made by artist Jan Pieńkowski, and as of March 2023, the trophy now has a name. The decided name is now Iris, but you can read more about naming the trophy in their article here. How beautiful would this trophy be to have in your home or office?!

The 2022 Booker Prize winner was The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sri Lankan author  Shehan Karunatilaka. The 2023 prize will be announced this November!

What Do The Different Book Awards Mean?

Have you ever looked at a book title, noticed an award on the front cover, and wondered what exactly it meant? A shiny gold medal on the front is really cool, but if you don’t know the meaning, what merit does it have? 

I’ve fallen victim to this myself! I see library books on the shelves and think, “Oooh this one has an award on the front, it’s probably a great one to read!” and typically, it is! But what does the award even mean? What are the different awards? How do they compare to one another? 

Here’s a list of each of the awards, and each week I’ll be doing a deeper dive into each one. I could fit them all into one post, but I feel like each of them deserve plenty of space and their own designated post so that we don’t have to skip out on details! They’re all unique and remarkable in their own way and don’t deserve to be given any less than the best. 

The awards I will be covering are: 

Pulitzer Prize Award
Caldecott Award
Newberry Medal Award
Booker Prize
Goodreads Choice Awards
National Book Award
Women’s Prize for Fiction
PEN/ Faulkner Prize
Edgar Award

Is there an award missing on this list that you’d like to see highlighted? Let me know and I’ll add it to my list!