The history behind book awards

Many of us have heard of the Booker prize or the Pulitzer and we understand it's a prestigious literary award but most awards have a rich history behind them and have evolved over time. Here are some eminent literary prizes and the story behind their existence.

Photo: Canva

Everyone has heard of the Nobel Prizes, but only a few know the history behind the prestigious award.

They are a set of annual international awards bestowed in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural or scientific advances. They were established in accordance to the will of the Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist Alfred Nobel. He insisted on a literature award as he was an avid reader and had a vast library which had books on various topics in several languages.

His will reads, “The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction ...”

Since 1901 the prize has been awarded annually, but for only 7 years and there have been 117 people awarded.

Photo: nobelprize.org

The Pulitzer Prizes are not just for literature but also for journalism and musical composition. The award has twenty-one categories, but only five are relavent to books, Fiction, History, Biography/Autobiography, Poetry and Nonfiction. The award was set up by a famous American journalist named Joseph Pulitzer, who made a provision for the establishment of the award in his will. Though it has grown and the categories have changed, the award still focuses on American writers and journalism like he intended.

Photo: pulitzer.org

This has two subcategories, both as important, The Booker Prize and The International Booker. The former was formerly known as the Booker–McConnell Prize from 1969–2001 and the Man Booker Prize from 2002–2019. It's awarded to the best original novel that's written in the English language. It often has a internationally popular book winning and it it's so prestigious that even being longlisted or shortlisted for it is an honour.

Man Booker International Prize, since 2015, is awarded annually to a phenomenal work of fiction, translated into English and published in the UK. The prize is £50,000 and is divided equally between the author and the translator, it's a good platform for authors who don't write in English to reach a wider audience.

Earlier, the Man Booker International Prize was to highlight one writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage

Photo: thebookerprizes.com

The 1991 shortlist of the Booker Prize had no women in it. Even by 1992, only 10 percent of authors who had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize were women. Moved by this, some women set up the Women's Prize for Fiction to help promote and award female writers. It was set up in 1995 and 2020 is it's 25th year running. To celebrate that, they held a campaign called Reclaim Her Name where they took popular books where female authors had used male pseudonyms and published them with their original names on the cover.

As evident from the name, they only allow women to participate in the awards. In 2019 a non-binary author was shortlisted but in 2020 they announced that only women who can legally prove they're female are allowed to submit their books.

Photo: womensprizeforfiction.co.uk

Named after George Orwell, who aimed to "to make political writing into an art," his prizes award good writing and thinking about politics. It has four categories, though two are on journalism. The Orwell Prize for Political Writing and Orwell Prize for Political Fiction are the literary awards.

Photo: TheOrwellPrize/Twitter

Administered by McGill University in Montreal, the Cundill History Prize is one of the most prestigious history awards. According to

Antonia Maioni, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill University, “The function of the Cundill History Prize to champion the world’s best history writing as a way to better understand the present and to start mapping a future is perhaps more important than ever right now.” Books from all over the world are allowed and the winner gets USD $75,000.

Photo: cundillprize.com