Best of Booker at London Literature Festival

Join a distinguished panel of writers championing each of the shortlisted books, and track down copies that have been released around the Southbank Centre Bookcrossing site.

9 June 2008

This July Southbank Centre presents the 2008 London Literature Festival (5-19 July), following the success of last year's inaugural event. 

To celebrate the shortlist for the Best of the Booker Prize, the festival will be bringing together a distinguished panel of writers to champion the novels they think should win.  The panel will be chaired by Razia Iqbal.

Featuring Edna O'Brien on JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, Kamila Shamsie on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Peter Kemp on Pat Barker's The Ghost Road, Mark Thwaite on JM Coetzee's Disgrace, Lesley Lokko on Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist and Claire Armitstead on Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda.

The panel will read short extracts from the books, followed by their own critical appraisal. At the end of the evening the audience will be asked to cast their vote.

Details: Saturday 5 July, 7.45pm at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, SE1

Tickets for the Festival are on sale now from the Southbank Centre website or by phone 0870 160 2522

Southbank Centre is an international bookcrossing site, encouraging you to share books by leaving them around the site for others to find. Through special numbered bookplates, each book can be reported as caught, and tracked as it travels to new homes. This year at the London Literature Festival, hunt down 100 prize-winning paperbacks from the shortlist of Best of the Booker, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer and across the Southbank Centre site. Come down to catch a new book or release a few of your own.

The Best of the Booker voting is open until 8 July.  The winner will be announced on 10 July.

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest