Literature Flashcards
Which novel by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize in 2022?
Written in second person and set in 1980s Sri Lanka, the title character is a dead photographer who sets out to solve the mystery of his own death and is given one week during which he can travel between the afterlife and the real world. He tries to retrieve a set of photographs to persuade his friends to share them widely to expose the brutalities of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Which novel by South African author Damon Galgut won the Booker Prize in 2021?
The novel is a family saga spanning four decades, each of which features a death in the family. It concerns the Afrikaner Swart family and their farm located outside Pretoria. The family consists of Manie, his wife Rachel, and their children Anton, Astrid, and Amor.
The Promise
Which novel by Scottish-American Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize in 2020?
The debut novel by Stuart, it tells the story of the youngest of three children, Hugh, growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in 1980s post-industrial working-class Glasgow.
Shuggie Bain
Which two novels were joint winners of the Booker Prize in 2019?
One of the novels was written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and is the sequel to her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Set 15 years later, it is narrated by Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale, Agnes from Gilead, and Daisy from Canada.
The second novel was written by British author Bernardine Evaristo and follows 12 characters in the UK across several decades. An example of feminist, postcolonial, LGBT, and postmodern fiction, the novel explores themes of intersectionality, in particular, and how the intersection of different aspects of the identities of the woman in the novel define their experiences.
The Testaments (Margaret Atwood)
Girl, Woman, Other (Bernardine Evaristo)
Which novel by Northern Irish author Anna Burns won the Booker Prize in 2018?
Set during The Troubles, the story follows an 18-year-old girl who is harassed by an older married man who is also the title character of the novel. The novel was praised for its complex portrayal of Northern Irish sociopolitics.
Milkman
Which novel by American author George Saunders won the Booker Prize in 2017?
Saunders’ first full length work, this experimental work deals with the grief of a former US president following the death of his son. The bulk of the novel, which takes place over the course of a single evening, is set in an intermediate space between life and rebirth, a location which is named in the novel’s title along with the name of the President.
Lincoln in the Bardo
Which novel by African American author Paul Beatty won the Booker Prize in 2016?
The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and muses about the state of racial relations in the contemporary United States. It was the first Booker Prize winning novel to be written by an American author.
The Sellout
Which novel written by Jamaican author Marlon James won the Booker Prize in 2015?
The novel spans several decades and explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in Jamaica in 1976 and its aftermath, through the crack wars in New York City in the 1980s and a changed Jamaica in the 1990s. The novel is split into five sections each named after songs, and was the first Booker Prize to be awarded to a Jamaican author.
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Which novel written by Australian author Richard Flanagan won the Booker Prize in 2014?
The novel tells the story of an Australian doctor haunted by memories of a love affair with his uncle’s wife and of his subsequent experiences as a Far East prisoner of war during the construction of the Burma Railway. Decades later, he finds his growing celebrity at odds with his feelings of failure and guilt. Its title is taken from the 17th century epic Oku no Hosomichi, the travel diary and magnum opus of Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Which novel by New Zealand author Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize in 2013?
Set in New Zealand’s South Island in 1866, the novel follows Walter Moody, a prospector who travels to the West Coast settlement of Hokitika to make his fortune on the goldfields. Instead, he stumbles into a tense meeting between twelve local men, and is drawn into a complex mystery involving a series of unsolved crimes. The title refers to the novel’s complex structure based on astrology.
The Luminaries
Which novel by British author Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize in 2012?
The novel was the second by Mantel to win the Booker Prize and is the sequel to the 2009 winner, Wolf Hall. It is the second novel in a trilogy which describes the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, a powerful minister in the court of Henry VIII.
Bring Up the Bodies
Which novel by British author Julian Barnes won the Booker Prize in 2011?
Barnes’ 11th novel under his own name, and his fourth shortlisted for a Booker, the novel is narrated by a retired man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn at school and vowed to remain friends for life. Webster is forced to confront the past when he encounters reminders of it and he reflects on the different roads his friends have taken. It was adapted into a 2017 film directed by Ritesh Batra and starring Jim Broadbent as Webster.
The Sense of an Ending
Which novel by British author Howard Jacobson won the Booker Prize in 2010?
Like many of Jacobson’s comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends, and the main characters of the novel. It was the first comic novel to win the Booker Prize since Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils in 1986.
The Finkler Question
Which novel by British author Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize in 2009?
The novel was the first by Mantel to win the Booker Prize. The novel’s sequal Bring Up the Bodies would also go on to win the Booker Prize in 2012. The first in a trilogy, it is a sympathetic fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. The book’s title takes his name from the Seymour estate in Wiltshire.
Wolf Hall
Which novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga won the Booker Prize in 2008?
The novel provides a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world as told through a retrospective narration from Balram Halwai, a village boy. The novel examines issues of the Hindu religion, caste, loyalty, corruption and poverty in India.
The White Tiger
Which novel by Irish author Anne Enright won the Booker Prize in 2007?
The novel traces the narrator’s inner journey, setting out to derive meaning from past and present events, and takes place in Ireland and England. Its title refers to the funeral of Liam Hegarty, an alcoholic who killed himself in the sea at Brighton.
The Gathering
Which novel by Indian author Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize in 2006?
Taking place in 1986, the story centres around the lives of Biju and Sai. Biju is an Indian living in the United States illegally, son of a cook who works for Sai’s grandfather. Sai is an orphan living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather Jemubhai Patel, the cook, and a dog named Mutt. The novel explores the effects on postcolonialism.
The Inheritance of Loss
Which novel by Irish author John Banville won the Booker Prize in 2005?
The novel’s narrator, Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, goes back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her.
The Sea
Which novel by English author Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize in 2004?
The historical novel is set in Britain in three parts, taking place in 1983, 1986 and 1987. The story surrounds the young gay protagonist, Nick Guest. Nick is middle-class and from the fictional market town of Barwick in Northamptonshire; he has graduated from Worcester College, Oxford with a First in English and is to begin postgraduate studies at University College London. Many of the significant characters in the novel are Nick’s male contemporaries from Oxford.
The Line of Beauty
Which novel by Australian author DBC Pierre won the Booker Prize in 2003?
In this black comedy, the life of the title character, a normal teenager who lives in Martirio, Texas, falls apart when his best friend, Jesus Navarro, murders their classmates in the schoolyard before killing himself, and he is taken in for questioning. Across the following course of events, the novel explores dark themes and examines our fascination with American culture.
Vernon God Little
Which novel by Canadian author Yann Martel won the Booker Prize in 2002?
The protagonist is Piscine Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, India who explores issues of spirituality and metaphysics from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger which raises questions about the nature of reality and how it is perceived and told. The novel was adapted into a 2012 film directed by Ang Lee and starring Suraj Sharma as the protagonist.
Life of Pi
Which novel by Australian author Peter Carey won the Booker Prize in 2001?
It was the second of Carey’s novels to win the prize following Oscar and Lucinda being awarded the prize in 1988. Despite the title of this novel, it is a work of historical fiction based on the life of a famous Australian bushranger and outlaw. A 2019 fillm adaption was directed by Justin Kurzel and stars George MacKay.
True History of the Kelly Gang
Which novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood won the Booker Prize in 2000?
The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century but mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. It was first of two novels by Atwood to be awarded the prize as her novel the The Testaments was announced as a joint-recipient in 2019.
The Blind Assassin
Which novel by Australian and South African author J. M. Coetzee won the Booker Prize in 1999?
The second of two novels by Coetzee to be awarded the prize, following The Life and Times of Michael K winning in 1983, the novel follows David Lurie, a white South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. Coetzee would win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003 and this novel would be adapted into a film starring John Malkvoch in 2008.
Disgrace.
Which novel by English author Ian McEwan won the Booker Prize in 1998?
At the funeral of photographer and writer Molly Lane, three of Molly’s former lovers converge. They include newspaper editor Vernon Halliday and composer Clive Linley who are old friends, and British Foreign Secretary Julian Garmony. The story of a euthanasia pact between two friends, a composer and a newspaper editor, whose relationship spins into disaster.
Amsterdam
