American Novelists to be Eligible for the Man Booker Prize

Organisers of the world-famous Man Booker Prize have announced that US novels will now be eligible for the prestigious prize.

To date, only authors from the British Commonwealth have been considered for the yearly award. 

Every year a group of writers compete for the cash prize. This year it’s £50,000.

According to the Sunday Times the reason that the organisers are finally accepting US entries is because “excluding writers from America is anachronistic."

"The Booker committee believes US writers must be allowed to compete to ensure the award’s global reputation.”

Literary analysts such as Michael Orthofer, have been applauding the move by the Man Booker organisers. Orthofer writes:

“For what it's worth, I think the Man Booker, like the Folio Prize, is on the right track: if you're looking for the best book, inclusiveness is better than exclusiveness -- so the awards that I think will be most hurt by this are actually the two strictly American ones, the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, both limited (in the fiction category) to American citizens.

“Since the Man Booker will now automatically consider many of the books eligible for these (as long as they are also published in the UK -- admittedly not a given, even for some recent NBA and Pulitzer finalists) and offer them much stiffer competition it comes out looking as the much more impressive prize.”

The Man Booker Prize was established in 1968.