The Booker Prizes Awardees & Honorees

Days Without End (2016) is a novel by Irish author Sebastian Barry. Days Without End is Barry’s ninth novel and received considerable critical acclaim. The novel won the 2017 Walter Scott Prize, was listed at number 74 on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century (2019 edition), and made BBC News’s 2019 list of the 100 most influential novels. The novel also won the 2016 Costa Book Award, making Barry... Read Days Without End Summary

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Disgrace (1999) is a novel by South African author J. M. Coetzee. It follows a white South African professor of English as he navigates the changing world of post-apartheid South Africa. Disgrace won the Booker Prize after its publication in 1999 and, four years later, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2008, the novel was adapted into a movie starring John Malkovich and Jessica Haines. This guide uses the 1999 Secker &... Read Disgrace Summary

Olga Tokarczuk is among Poland’s most famous and critically acclaimed contemporary authors. She has received multiple national and international literary awards, including the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her most well-known novels and their translations into English are House of Day, House of Night (2003), Primeval and Other Times (2010), Flights (2018), and The Books of Jacob (2021).Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was published in Poland in 2009 but didn’t become... Read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Summary

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh was published in 2015 and won the PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction. The novel is set in 1964. It follows the story of Eileen, a woman planning to escape her life in the New England town of X-ville. Eileen is characterized by self-loathing, depression, and body dysmorphia, all of which developed due to her abusive and neglectful childhood. Before she leaves X-ville forever, Eileen must come to terms with her own... Read Eileen Summary

Empire of the Sun is a 1984 novel written by British author J.G. Ballard. In it, Jim, the 11-year-old son of a wealthy British family, is living in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China on the eve of Pearl Harbor, 1941. When Japanese forces attack the Settlement, Jim is separated from his parents. He survives for several weeks by scavenging food from abandoned houses, before being arrested by the Japanese. He is then taken to... Read Empire of the Sun Summary

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A thrilling tale of thievery, betrayal, and mistaken identity, Fingersmith, by Welsh author Sarah Waters, tells the story of two women from two very different stations of life whose fates are inextricably linked. Set in the 1860s, Fingersmith is narrated alternately by Sue Smith (also known as Sue Trinder) and Maud Lilly. One is a young “fingersmith”—slang for a thief—lovingly protected from the worst of her world by Mrs. Sucksby; the other is an aristocratic... Read Fingersmith Summary

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Frankissstein is a novel by Jeanette Winterson that combines speculative and historical fiction in revisiting Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. Winterson is a prolific author, known for her explorations of physical reality, gender, sexuality, and identity. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for First Novel, and Frankissstein was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Winterson is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, and... Read Frankissstein Summary

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Hot Milk (2016) is a novel written by South African and British author Deborah Levy. It follows Sofia Papastergiadis, who has been caring for her mother, Rose, through Rose’s hypochondria-driven illnesses. Sofia and Rose go to Almeria, Spain, to seek treatment from Dr. Gomez. While there, Sofia must confront her mother’s dependency on her and question what she wants in her own life. Levy explores themes of The Struggle for Independence, The Complexities of Sexual... Read Hot Milk Summary

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