Annal:1983 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Man Booker Prize in the year 1983. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Life and Times of Michael K: A Novel
- 1983 Booker winner
- Score: 10.33
In South Africa, whose civil administration is colapsing under the pressure of years of civil strife, an obscure young gardener named Michael K decides to take his mother on a long march away from the guns towards a new life in the abandoned countryside. Everywhere he goes however, the war follows him. Tracked down and locked up as a collaborator with the rural guerrillas, he embarks on a fast that angers, baffles, and finally awes his captors.
The story of Michael K is the story of a man caught up in a war beyond his understanding, but determined to live his life, however minimally, on his own terms. J.M. Coetzee has produced a masterpiece which has the astonishing power to make the wilderness boom.
Shame: A Novel
- 1983 Booker shortlist
- Score: 6.33
- 1983 Booker shortlist
- Score: 6.33
Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.
“Waterland, like the Hardy novels, carries with all else a profound knowledge of a people, a place, and their interweaving…. Swift tells his tale with wonderful contemporary verve and verbal felicity…. A fine and original work.” —Los Angeles Times
