Archive Collection
The Booker Prize Winners
1969–2025
The Booker Prize is awarded annually to the best original novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. Since 1969, it has recognised literary giants from Iris Murdoch and Salman Rushdie to Hilary Mantel and Bernardine Evaristo.
About the Booker Prize
- Awarded by
- The Booker Prize Foundation
- First awarded
- 1969
- Country
- United Kingdom and Ireland
- Winner receives
- £50,000
When it is announced
The winner is announced in November, following a longlist in late July and a shortlist in September. See the full announcement calendar.
How to enter
Publishers submit on an author's behalf and an author cannot enter directly. Eligible books are long form fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland during the prize year.
Official prize site · Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.
| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Flesh | Flesh won the Booker Prize in 2025, and David Szalay became the first Hungarian British writer to take it. The prize is fifty thousand pounds. Roddy… |
| 2024 | Orbital | Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024, the first book set in space to do so. At 136 pages it is the second shortest winner in the prize's history,… |
| 2023 | Prophet Song | Prophet Song won the Booker Prize in 2023, and Paul Lynch became the fifth Irish writer to take it. The prize is fifty thousand pounds and this was… |
| 2022 | The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida | The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida won the Booker Prize in 2022, Shehan Karunatilaka's second novel and the second by a Sri Lankan writer to take the… |
| 2021 | The Promise | The Promise won the 2021 Booker Prize on 3 November, at Galgut's third attempt after being shortlisted in 2003 for The Good Doctor and in 2010 for In… |
| 2020 | Shuggie Bain | Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize in 2020, a debut novel that had been turned down by dozens of publishers before it found one. Margaret Busby,… |
| 2019 | The Testaments | The Testaments shared the Booker Prize in 2019 with Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other, in defiance of the prize's own rules. Ties had been… |
| 2019 | Girl, Woman, Other | Girl, Woman, Other shared the Booker Prize in 2019 with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, and the circumstances were extraordinary. The rules had… |
| 2018 | Milkman | Milkman won the Booker Prize in 2018, and Anna Burns became the first writer from Northern Ireland to take it. The prize is fifty thousand pounds,… |
| 2017 | Lincoln in the Bardo | Lincoln in the Bardo won the Booker Prize in 2017, and George Saunders became only the second American to win it, three years after the prize opened… |
| 2016 | The Sellout | The Sellout won the Booker Prize in 2016, and Paul Beatty became the first American to win it, two years after the prize opened to writers of any… |
| 2015 | A Brief History of Seven Killings | A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Booker Prize in 2015, and Marlon James became the first Jamaican writer to take it. Michael Wood, chairing… |
| 2014 | The Narrow Road to the Deep North | The Narrow Road to the Deep North won the Booker Prize in 2014, Richard Flanagan's sixth novel. He is the third Australian to win it and the first… |
| 2013 | The Luminaries | The Luminaries won the Booker Prize in 2013, and Eleanor Catton was twenty eight, the youngest winner in the prize's history at that point. At 848… |
| 2012 | Bring Up the Bodies | Bring Up the Bodies won the Booker Prize in 2012, three years after Wolf Hall took the same prize. The result set several records at once. Hilary… |
| 2011 | The Sense of an Ending | The Sense of an Ending won the Booker Prize in 2011, at Julian Barnes's fourth appearance on the shortlist after Flaubert's Parrot, England England… |
| 2010 | The Finkler Question | The Finkler Question won the Booker Prize in 2010 and was reported everywhere as the first unashamedly comic novel to take it in the prize's forty… |
| 2009 | Wolf Hall | Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize in 2009, the first of Hilary Mantel's two, and it beat a shortlist that included two previous laureates in A.S. Byatt… |
| 2008 | The White Tiger | The White Tiger won the Booker Prize in 2008. It was Aravind Adiga's debut novel and he was thirty three, one of the youngest winners. He was the… |
| 2007 | The Gathering | The Gathering won the Booker Prize in 2007, and Anne Enright was the first Irish woman to take it. It was widely reported as a surprise. The… |
| 2006 | The Inheritance of Loss | The Inheritance of Loss won the Booker Prize in 2006. Kiran Desai was thirty five, the youngest woman to win it at that point, and the third writer… |
| 2005 | The Sea | The Sea won the Booker Prize in 2005 as an outsider, and the decision remains one of the most argued about in the prize's history. The shortlist was… |
| 2004 | The Line of Beauty | The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004 and was immediately labelled by the press as the first gay novel to win, a description that flattened… |
| 2003 | Vernon God Little | Vernon God Little won the Booker Prize in 2003, a debut novel by a writer using a pseudonym, and it was a genuine shock result. It became the first… |
| 2002 | Life of Pi | Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002, Yann Martel's third book and by far his best known. It became one of the most commercially successful… |
| 2001 | True History of the Kelly Gang | True History of the Kelly Gang won the Booker Prize in 2001, Peter Carey's second after Oscar and Lucinda in 1988, making him at that point only the… |
| 2000 | The Blind Assassin | The Blind Assassin won the Booker Prize in 2000, Margaret Atwood's tenth novel and her first win after three previous shortlistings for The… |
| 1999 | Disgrace | Disgrace won the Booker Prize in 1999, and J.M. Coetzee became the first writer to win it twice, having taken it in 1983 for Life and Times of… |
| 1998 | Amsterdam | Amsterdam won the Booker Prize in 1998, and it has spent the years since as the standard example in the argument about the prize rewarding the wrong… |
| 1997 | The God of Small Things | The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize in 1997. It was Arundhati Roy's first novel and she was the first Indian woman to win the prize. The… |
| 1996 | Last Orders | Last Orders won the Booker Prize in 1996, Graham Swift's sixth novel and his second appearance on the shortlist after Waterland in 1983. The win was… |
| 1995 | The Ghost Road | The Ghost Road won the Booker Prize in 1995 and closed the Regeneration trilogy, which Pat Barker had begun in 1991. The result was unusually… |
| 1994 | How Late It Was, How Late | How Late It Was, How Late won the Booker Prize in 1994 and remains among the most contested decisions in the prize's history. James Kelman was the… |
| 1993 | Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha | Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize in 1993. Roddy Doyle had already published The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, the last of which… |
| 1992 | The English Patient | The English Patient shared the Booker Prize in 1992 with Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, only the second tie in the prize's history. The judges said… |
| 1992 | Sacred Hunger | Hamish Hamilton published Sacred Hunger on 27 February 1992, and that autumn the judges split the Booker Prize between it and Michael Ondaatje's The… |
| 1991 | The Famished Road | The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991. Ben Okri was thirty two and the first Black African writer to win the prize. It is often mislabelled… |
| 1990 | Possession | Possession won the Booker Prize in 1990, A.S. Byatt's fifth novel, and became one of the prize's genuine commercial successes, selling in very large… |
| 1989 | The Remains of the Day | The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize in 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro's third novel, after An Artist of the Floating World had been shortlisted three… |
| 1988 | Oscar and Lucinda | Oscar and Lucinda won the Booker Prize in 1988, Peter Carey's third novel and his first win, after being shortlisted in 1985 for Illywhacker. It also… |
| 1987 | Moon Tiger | Moon Tiger won the Booker Prize in 1987. Penelope Lively had been shortlisted twice before, for The Road to Lichfield and According to Mark, and she… |
| 1986 | The Old Devils | The Old Devils won the Booker Prize in 1986 and was reported at the time as a rare openly comic winner, a framing that returned when Howard Jacobson… |
| 1985 | The Bone People | The Bone People won the Booker Prize in 1985. Keri Hulme was the first New Zealander to win it and the first writer to win with a debut novel. The… |
| 1984 | Hotel du Lac | Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize in 1984, Anita Brookner's fourth novel. She was fifty six and had published her first at fifty three, having spent… |
| 1983 | Life & Times of Michael K | Life and Times of Michael K won the Booker Prize in 1983, J.M. Coetzee's first of two. He won again in 1999 for Disgrace, becoming the first writer… |
| 1982 | Schindler's List | Schindler's Ark won the Booker Prize in 1982, and Thomas Keneally was the first Australian to win it. The decision caused an immediate argument… |
| 1981 | Midnight's Children | Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981, Salman Rushdie's second novel, and it went on to win twice more in retrospect: the Booker of… |
| 1980 | Rites of Passage | Rites of Passage won the Booker Prize in 1980, when William Golding was sixty nine and had been famous for Lord of the Flies for a quarter of a… |
| 1979 | Offshore | Offshore won the Booker Prize in 1979 and remains the shortest winner in the prize's history at around 130 pages, which reopened the perennial… |
| 1978 | The Sea, the Sea | The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize in 1978, Iris Murdoch's nineteenth novel and her only win, after three previous appearances on the… |
| 1977 | Staying On | Staying On won the Booker Prize in 1977. It is a companion to Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, the four novel sequence beginning with The Jewel in the… |
| 1976 | Saville | Saville won the Booker Prize in 1976. Storey remains the only professional rugby league player to have won the prize. He signed for Leeds at… |
| 1975 | Heat and Dust | Heat and Dust won the Booker Prize in 1975. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Cologne to Polish Jewish parents, came to England as a refugee in 1939,… |
| 1974 | The Conservationist | The Conservationist shared the Booker Prize in 1974 with Stanley Middleton's Holiday, the first tie in the prize's history. The circumstances were… |
| 1974 | Holiday | Holiday shared the Booker Prize in 1974 with Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist, the first time the award had been split. The deadlock was… |
| 1973 | The Siege of Krishnapur | The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973, and J.G. Farrell used his acceptance speech to criticise Booker McConnell's involvement in… |
| 1972 | G. | G. won the Booker Prize in 1972, and John Berger used his acceptance speech at the Cafe Royal in London to attack the people giving it to… |
| 1971 | In a Free State | In a Free State won the Booker Prize in 1971, and the judges argued about whether it was eligible at all. The judges argued at length over whether a… |
| 1970 | The Elected Member | The Elected Member won the Booker Prize in 1970, and Bernice Rubens was the first woman to win it. She remains the only Welsh writer to have done… |
| 1969 | Something to Answer For | Something to Answer For won the first Booker Prize, awarded in 1969 for a novel published the previous November. That makes it the beginning of… |