The Golden Man Booker: Good writing has won out over famous names

The Golden Five shortlist celebrates the best of 50 years of the Man Booker prize – and now the audience have final say in who wins

Hilary Mantel, George Saunders and Penelope Lively are in the running for this special literary prize (Els Zweerink/Chloe Aftel)

The biggest surprise of the Golden Man Booker shortlist, which was announced on Saturday evening at the Hay Festival and celebrates the 50th anniversary of the prestigious literary award, has to be the fact that Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger beat Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to win the nomination for the 1980s.

The five shortlisted books each represent one decade of Britain’s most famous literary prize. Their critical acclaim unquestioned; the emphasis this time round was on which of the winning books had best stood the test of time, remaining relevant to readers today.

Chosen by a panel of judges – one responsible for each decade, the 1970s through to today – it’s the public who now decide which title wins the overall accolade. Voting is open for the next month on the Man Booker website – until midnight on 25 June – and the winner will be announced at the Man Booker 50 Festival at London’s Southbank Centre on 8 July.

Some of the nominated works, but which has best stood the test of time?

As well as its initial win in 1981, Midnight’s Children also won the Best of the Booker, which was awarded 10 years ago to celebrate the prize’s 40th anniversary. As such, few would have put money on 1987 winner Moon Tiger, Lively’s haunting story of her dying protagonist’s memories of Egypt during the war, coming out on top. Especially since she was also up against such heavy hitters as Kingsley Amis, Anita Brookner, Peter Carey, William Golding, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Thomas Keneally.

But poet Lemn Sissay, the judge for the 1980s, was captivated by what he described as Lively’s “sublime” writing and “exquisite” details.

Novelist Kamila Shamsie had a similarly hard decision in front of her when it came to the 1990s, a decade that produced just as formidable a list of winners as the previous. From Pat Barker’s concluding volume in her Regeneration trilogy, The Ghost Road, through Arundhati Roy’s astonishing debut The God of Small Things, the ever-popular Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam, and JM Coetzee’s tour de force, Disgrace.

Judge Lemn Sissay chose Penelope Lively’s ‘Moon Tiger’ for its sublime writing (Man Booker Prize)

The book that stood out from the crowd, however, was Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, the winner from 1992; a “no brainer” as far as Shamsie was concerned, describing it as a “miracle” of a novel.

Writer and editor Robert McCrum, the judge for the 1970s, had a seemingly less arduous task ahead of him. The further back we reach, the less memorable the winning books are, not least because the prize simply didn’t have the kind of profile it has today until it began being televised in the early 1980s. Describing it as a “masterclass in contemporary fiction by somebody who’s at the top of his game”, McCrum picked the 1971 winner In a Free State, VS Naipaul’s story of a Heart of Darkness-like road trip through an unnamed African country.

The least surprising of the Golden Five, as Man Booker is calling the shortlist, has to be Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which was picked by broadcaster and novelist Simon Mayo. Given Mantel’s won the prize twice – for Wolf Hall in 2009, and shortly thereafter for its follow-up Bring Up the Bodies in 2012 – it seems only fair she’s acknowledged here. That said, neither JM Coetzee nor Peter Carey, the only other authors to have won the prize twice, made the final cut.

The question on everyone’s lips is whether Mantel will score a hat trick with the much-anticipated final volume in her Tudor-set trilogy, thus becoming the only writer to win the prize three times.

Judge Hollie McNish said George Saunders’ ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ invented a new literary level (Man Booker Prize)

All the same, Hollie McNish, the judge for the current decade, overlooked Bring Up the Bodies in favour of the current trophy holder, George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, which is set in a cemetery over the course of a single night, during which Abraham Lincoln keeps watch over his recently deceased son’s grave. The first novel by the lauded American short story writer, some considered it stretched the remit of the prize since it’s more verse than prose.

This, however, is exactly what attracted poet McNish, who was impressed that Saunders had, as she put it, “invented a new kind of literary level with novels.”

Saunders’ win was preceded by another US success, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout in 2016.

In 2014 the prize expanded to recognise authors from anywhere in the world writing in English and published in the UK, which ostensibly meant American entires, something that some critics argue has been at the cost of rewarding homegrown talent.

But in the course of the half a century since the prize was first awarded, back in 1969, it’s weathered various storms. The 1972 winner John Berger memorably used his acceptance speech to attack the prize’s sponsor Booker McConnell’s dirty trading history in the Caribbean, saying he was going to donate half his winnings to the London arm of the Black Panthers.

Elizabeth Jane Howard, a judge in 1974, apparently lobbied hard for her then husband Kingsley Amis’s Ending Up to make that year’s shortlist – and succeeded. Meanwhile, in 2001, AL Kennedy, who had been a judge in 1996, famously declared the entire thing “a pile of crooked nonsense”, claiming that winning was based on “who knows who, who’s sleeping with who, who’s selling drugs to who, who’s married to who, whose turn it is”.

So we might consider today’s resistance to the Americans as only the latest in a series of controversies.

Michael Ondaatje won the Booker for ‘The English Patient’ in 1992 – a miracle of a novel, says one judge

The creation of this Golden Man Booker suggests an institution that wants to celebrate its past while also trying to reaffirm the importance of its position in our increasingly global modern world. It’s certainly an interesting Golden Five, one that suggests good writing has won out over the obvious allure of some of the more famous names. Now it’s up to the rest of us.

A public vote makes sense – both in terms of apparent fairness, and as a publicity stunt – but it does mean popularity becomes paramount. If I had to place a bet, I’d say Mantel or, at a push, Ondaatje will come out on top. Not because they’re necessarily the best of the bunch, but because they’re the best known.

I’m more than prepared to be proved wrong though – especially since I’ve already cast my own vote for Moon Tiger.

Voting is open on the Man Booker website until midnight on 25 June. The winner will be announced at the Southbank Centre in London on 8 July​