LONDON - An award celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be handed out this summer, with Canadian authors Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel and Michael Ondaatje in the running and the public given a chance to vote.
The Best of the Booker will honour the best novel to have won the prestigious Booker Prize since it was first awarded in April 1969, organizers announced.
In all, 41 authors have received the literary prize, worth about $100,000, because in 1974 and 1992 there were two winners. Toronto-based Ondaatje was one of those joint winners, sharing the top spot in 1992 for "The English Patient" alongside Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger."
Atwood, also of Toronto, won the prize in 2000 for "The Blind Assassin" and Montreal-based Martel was honoured in 2002 for "Life of Pi."
The Best of the Booker judging panel will consist of novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, who is also the chair; writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup; and John Mullan, professor of English at University College London.
The judges will select a shortlist of six novels that have already won the prize, after which the public will be allowed to vote for their favourite on the Man Booker Prize website, .
The winner of the one-off Best of the Booker award will be based on the public vote, and voters can be from anywhere in the world. The results will be announced at the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre in July. The prize is a custom-made trophy.
This is the second celebratory award created by Booker Prize organizers.
The first, called the Booker of Bookers, was handed out in 1993 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the prize. The winner was Indian-born, British writer Salman Rushdie for "Midnight's Children."
