Winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize, the first of J.G. Farrell’s Empire trilogy is set in Ireland in 1919, when the struggle for independence is about to explode with brutal force
By J.G. Farrell
The Lost Man Booker
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a one-off award to honour the books that missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1970
In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize stopped being awarded retrospectively and became a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. At the same time, the prize-giving moved from April to November. This meant many works of fiction published in 1970 missed out on being considered for the prize.
Forty years on, in 2010, a panel of three judges – all of whom were born in or around 1970 – was appointed to select a shortlist of six novels from a longlist of books that had fallen through the net four decades ago. The judges were poet and novelist Tobias Hill, television newsreader Katie Derham, and the journalist and critic Rachel Cooke. The winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize was chosen by a public vote.
Ion Trewin, then director of the Booker Prize, said: ‘Our longlist demonstrates that 1970 was a remarkable year for fiction written in English. Recognition for these novels and the eventual winner is long overdue.’
Troubles by J.G. Farrell won the special award, with 38% of the public vote. Farrell died in a fishing accident in 1979, so his family accepted a designer-bound copy of the novel on his behalf. Hill praised Farrell as ‘sharp and intelligent and sometimes laugh out loud funny as well as being thoughtful and interesting’.
It wasn’t the first time Farrell’s writing talents had been recognised: his novel The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973.
The Winner
The Shortlist
At 20, when his reign began, Alexander the Great was already a seasoned soldier and a complex man. Mary Renault explores the years that shaped him
By Mary Renault
Nina Bawden’s portrait of a family in crisis raises fundamental questions about parents and children, offering tentative hope, but no tidy solutions
By Nina Bawden
Multi-award-winning Australian author Shirley Hazzard unfolds this intimate emotional drama in war-time Italy, against the fading grandeur of Naples
In Muriel Spark’s brilliantly dark novella, a search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience turns into a journey of self-destruction
By Muriel Spark
Patrick White explores the inner demons of the artist through Hurtle Duffield, an egotist incapable of loving anything except what he paints
The Longlist
The 5th entry in crime writer Rendell's bestselling Inspector Wexford series of novels
By Ruth Rendell
The only novel ever published by the playwright Joe Orton (posthumously), this fantasy follows the fortunes of the hero, Gombold, who strays onto the head of a creature some hundred miles high
By Joe Orton
Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O’Brian’s now famous Aubrey-Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written
Set in Shiva Naipaul’s birthplace, Fireflies is a massive chronicle, in two parts, of the fortunes of The Khojas, Trinidad's most venerated Hindu family.
An exploration of love and its excesses, missteps, and modest triumphs.
By Iris Murdoch
The restrictions of a wartime childhood in London and subsequent post-war shortages have done little to enrich Timothy's early youth. But everything changes when Timothy's glamorous older sister, Kath, invites him to spend the summer at Heidelberg.
By David Lodge
'Okay God, say what you like, but I damn well wish I could get away just sometimes by myself. But no. It’s a criminal offense, nearly. What makes any of them think they’ve got the right to tell me, own me, always have me there.’
The story of Antonio Valli, a young Italian philosopher, who arrives to do a year's research at a well-to-do university. He lodges with Dick Thompson, a successful middle-aged novelist, and the Italian's good looks and impulsive yet immensely likeable character soon have Dick captivated...
By Francis King
A chilling novel that explores the extremes of childhood cruelty, now published as a Penguin Essential.
By Susan Hill
Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates a murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe.
The date is 31 June, 1943. An RAF crew prepare for their next bombing raid on Germany. It is a night that many will never forget.
By Len Deighton
Part and parcel of a large and boisterous family, he is pushed around the streets of Dublin by his brothers; the small crippled occupant of a boxcar, silently witnessing the city's joys and woes.
Joseph Tallantire has hope and ambition – like his father before him he is determined to make something of himself and improve his lot.
By Melvyn Bragg
In the final book of the series that began with The Darling Buds of May, the fun-loving Pop Larkin finds himself confined to a bed following a mild heart attack - caused by a little too much of what he fancied.
By H.E. Bates
The tone of The Hand-Reared Boy is lightly humorous, with a sentiment that never drops into sentimentality. It presents without swagger, much that is not easy to accept.
