Judges announced
For Man Booker International 2005
The judging panel of the first Man Booker International Prize is announced today, 14th October, 2004. Chaired by Professor John Carey, this truly international panel consists of writer and academic, Azar Nafisi and writer, novelist and editor, Alberto Manguel.
Following the first judges meeting, Chair, Professor John Carey comments:
“Azar Nafisi and Alberto Manguel command, between them, a formidable range of literatures and languages. This will be a truly global prize. The preliminary long list drawn up by the judges has 95 authors from 35 different countries - a scope unmatched by any previous award for English-language writing.”
The Man Booker International Prize was announced in June 2004 and will recognize one writer for their achievement in fiction. Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.
The shortlist, approximately fifteen writers under serious consideration for the prize, will be announced early in 2005. The first winner of The Man Booker International Prize 2005 will be announced at a press conference in London in mid 2005. Two months later the prize will be presented at an awards ceremony in London.
The prize is sponsored by the Man Group, which also sponsors the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
The Man Booker International Prize is significantly different from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlights one writer’s continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. Both prizes continue to strive for literary excellence.
For up to date information and photographs of the judging panel, please visit www.manbookerinternational.com or contact Colman Getty PR on 020 7631 2666 or mark@colmangettypr.co.uk.
The Judges
Professor John Carey
John Carey is the UK’s most eminent literary critic. He is also a broadcaster and the author of many books. He was Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1976-2001 and chaired the Booker Prize in 1982 and in 2003.
He is the author of Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the Twentieth Century’s Most Enjoyable Books (2000), which discusses fifty twentieth century books that Carey has enjoyed. His other works include The Violent Effigy: A study of Dickens’ imagination (1973); John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (1981); The Intellectuals and the Masses, (1992); and The Faber Book of Utopias (1999).
Since 1977 Professor Carey has also been the principal book reviewer for The Sunday Times and is a regular panellist on BBC 2’s Newsnight Review. He was born in 1934 and is married with two sons.
Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi is a visiting fellow, professorial lecturer, and the director of The Dialogue Project: The Culture of Democracy in Muslim Societies at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.
A professor of aesthetics, culture and literature, Dr. Nafisi has previously taught at Oxford University and at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabaii before coming to the United States. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil in 1981, and did not resume teaching until 1987.
Her writings include Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabakov’s Novels (1994) and chapters for Muslim Women and Politics of Participation (1997), Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran (1992), and Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women, (1999). Her new book, the critically-acclaimed bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, was published by Random House in March 2003
She has also written for The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal.
Alberto Manguel
Born in Buenos Aires in 1948, Alberto Manguel was raised in Israel where his father was the Argentine ambassador and later did his schooling in Argentinia. After travelling extensively, he settled in Canada in 1982. He is now a Canadian citizen.
Alberto Manguel is a writer, novelist, translator and editor, whose books include the award-winning A History of Reading, Into the Looking-glass Wood and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places and novels, News from a Foreign Country Came and most recently, Stevenson Under the Palm Trees.
He has received numerous awards and honours from around the world, including the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 1996), Premio German Sanchez Ruiperez for best literary criticism (Spain, 2002) and the Prix Roger Caillois (France, 2004).
