About

• The Booker Prize is the leading literary award for outstanding fiction in the English language.
• The Booker Prize was co-founded by publishers Tom Maschler and Graham C Greene in 1969.
• From 1969 to 2001, it was sponsored by Booker Group Ltd, a British wholesale foods company  after which the prize was named.
• Initially it was awarded just for writers from the Commonwealth, but later opened to writers globally.  
• In 2002, British investment management firm Man Group became the prize’s sponsor, and thus it came to be known as The Man Booker Prize.
• In 2004, a separate International Booker Prize was instituted for translated works.

Conditions to be met

• The work of fiction has to be written in English (should not be a translation)
• The work has to be published in the UK and Ireland in the year of the prize irrespective of the nationality of the author.

Award

• The winner receives £50,000. Each of the six shortlisted authors are awarded £2,500.
• Both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a global readership and can expect a dramatic increase in book sales.