"Burns draws on the experience of Northern Ireland during the Troubles to portray a world that allows individuals to abuse the power granted by a community to those who resist the state on their behalf. Yet this is never a novel about just one place or time. The local is in service to an exploration of the universal experience of societies in crisis."  Chair of judges Kwame Anthony Appiah

Booker Prize Winner 2018: Milkman by Anna Burns

Unfolding in the graveyard over a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief and the deeper meaning and possibilities of life.

Booker Prize Winner 2017:  Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

A remarkable journey that challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement and the holy grail of racial equality.

Booker Prize Winner 2016:  The Sellout by Paul Beatty

On 3 December 1976, just weeks before the general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica concert to ease political tensions, seven men from West Kingston stormed his house with machine guns. Marley survived and went on to perform at the free concert, but the next day he left the country and didn’t return for two years.  Inspired by this near-mythic event, the book takes the form of an imagined oral biography, told by ghosts, witnesses, killers, members of parliament, drug dealers, conmen, beauty queens, FBI and CIA agents, reporters, journalists, and even Keith Richards' drug dealer.

Booker Prize Winner 2015:  A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James