The announcement of the Booker prize longlist this week marks the start of the new cycle of literary prizes in the UK. The so-called “Booker dozen” of 13 novels not only offers a handy summer reading list, but represents the moment when readers start to find a shape in the deluge of titles that are published each year. At nearly 190,000 books, the UK’s annual output is the third biggest in the world, behind only China and the US. So, love them or hate them, prizes play an important part in helping readers to chart a way through.
The landscape will be different in the year ahead, after last month’s sudden and unexplained announcement that the coffee retailer Costa was scrapping the Booker’s main rival for literary prestige with immediate effect. Previously known as the Whitbread book awards, the Costas offered awards in five categories – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s and first novels – with an overall book of the year picked from the section winners.
