New Booker International Prize Nominees Announced
The Man Group, plc. which sponors the UK's most prestigious literary award, The Man Booker Prize, this year inaugurates a new international literary lifetime achievement award (of sorts), the Man Booker International Prize. The £ 60,000 prize will be awarded once every two years. "This new prize goes a step further in highlighting one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to world fiction," states the Booker International Prize website. The writers can be from anywhere in the world, but their works must be available in English. The eighteen contenders include four Nobel laureates: Gabriel García Marquez (Colombia), Nagib Mahfouz (Egypt), Günter Grass (Germany), and Saul Bellow (Canada), as well as the Muriel Spark (Scotland), Tomás Eloy Martinez (Argentina), Margaret Atwood (Canada), Stanislaw Lem (Poland), John Updike (U.S.) and others. Get the complete list with bios and works here. The winner will be announced in London in June.