A Comparison of the 2014 and 2015 Winners for the Man Booker Prize and the Folio Prize

Abstract

This thesis is focused on how the Folio Prize was created in 2014 to challenge the Man Booker Prize, as the Folio Prize’s focus lies solely on literary fiction, while the Booker Prize is accused of being awarded to popular fiction. The winners of the 2014 and 2015 Man Booker Prize, Richard Flanagan with The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Marlon James with A Brief History of Seven Killings respectively, and the 2014 and 2015 Folio Prize winners, George Saunders with Tenth of December and Akhil Sharma with Family Life, are analysed and compared to each other. Furthermore, Ali Smith’s novel How to Be Both was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Folio Prize and thus offers a glimpse of how a novel can be considered both popular and literary. These analyses chart some contemporary literary criteria, but do not offer a template for what a literary fiction novel is nowadays.