The Man Booker International Prize 2011

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. Canadian author, Alice Munro won the 2009 prize, 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 judges

• Dr Rick Gekoski (chair)
  

  Dr. Rick Gekoski is one of the world’s leading bookmen: a writer, rare-book dealer, broadcaster and academic. An American who came to England in 1966, and now a dual UK/US citizen, he has established two private presses, The Sixth Chamber Press and The Bridgewater Press, which issue finely printed editions of leading writers, novelists and poets. As a broadcaster he has written and delivered three series of Rare Books, Rare People for BBC Radio 4, which he followed with two series of Lost, Stolen, or Shredded: The History of Some Missing Works of Art. Rick teaches creative non-fiction for the Arvon Foundation, and sits on their Development Board. He was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2005. Dr Gekoski is the author of three books which trace his major enthusiasms, Staying Up, Tolkien’s Gown and Outside of a Dog, as well as a critical study of Joseph Conrad and the Bibliography of William Golding.

• Carmen Callil
  

   

  Carmen Callil is a publisher, writer and critic. She was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1938. In 1972 Callil founded the publishing company, Virago, to publish books which celebrated women and women’s lives, literature and history. In 1982 she was appointed managing director of Chatto & Windus and The Hogarth Press where she remained until 1994, continuing, also, as chairman of Virago Press until 1995. In 1994 she was editor-at-large for Random House worldwide. From 1985-1991 she was on the board of Channel 4 Television. She served as a member of the management committee of the Booker Prize, 1979-1984; and was Chairman of the Judges, Booker prize for Fiction, in 1996. She is the author of a book about Vichy France: Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family & Fatherland, and, with Colm Toibin of The Modern Library: The Best 200 Novels in English since 1950.

• Justin Cartwright
  

  Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa. He worked in advertising as a copywriter and progressed to making documentary films on a number of subjects, as various as the Dead Sea Scrolls and lions hunting at night in Africa. He has written 12 novels, including In Every Face I Meet, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1995, and Leading the Cheers, which won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1998. Five of his novels have been shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. The Promise of Happiness won the Hawthornden Prize in 2005 and the Sunday Times of South Africa’s Literary Prize. The Song Before It Is Sung, published in 2007 won the inaugural Jewish Cultural Award. He is a critic and a frequent contributor to BBC’s Front Row and other cultural programmes. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.