2020 Booker Prize was awarded to which of the following novels ?

Question

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Correct — option (2), Shuggie Bain. The 2020 Booker Prize went to 'Shuggie Bain' by Douglas Stuart, a debut novel published that year. It is set in post-industrial Glasgow between 1981 and 1992 and follows a boy growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes as the city's heavy industry collapses around them; the novel is closely drawn from the author's own childhood and is dedicated to his mother. Stuart was only the second Scottish writer to win the prize since it was first awarded in 1969, and the win was widely noted because first novels rarely take it. What makes this question difficult is not the winner but the option set, because every one of the other three names is also a Booker-winning novel — from 2016, 2013 and 2012 respectively. The Commission has assembled four genuine winners and asked for the one attached to a particular year, so recognition is worthless and only the pairing of book to year will do. The lesson generalises to the whole of the awards section: for any prize the Commission is likely to ask about, learn the last several winners as a dated list rather than as a set of names, because a set of names is exactly what the distractors are drawn from. It is also worth keeping the Booker Prize itself distinct from the International Booker Prize, which is a separate award for a single work translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, and whose money is shared equally between the author and the translator. The Booker Prize proper, which this question is about, is for a novel written originally in English; since 2014 it has been open to writers of any nationality rather than only to those of the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe, which is why an American novel appears among the distractors. One printing note: the paper sets option (4) as 'Bring up the bodies', with lower-case letters where the published title has 'Bring Up the Bodies'. It is reproduced here as printed.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 'The Sellout' is a real Booker winner, but of 2016 and not 2020. It is a satirical novel by the American writer Paul Beatty about race in the United States, and its win was historically significant for the prize rather than for the year in question: Beatty was the first American writer to take the Booker, which had become possible only after the eligibility rules were widened in 2014 to admit any novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom, in place of the older restriction to writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe. That change is worth knowing because it explains the presence of American novels in the recent list at all, and because it is itself examinable. As an answer to this question it is simply four years out.  (c) 'The Luminaries' won the Booker in 2013, seven years before the year named in this stem. It is a long novel by the New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton set during the gold rush on the country's South Island, and it is remembered for two records: Catton was the youngest winner of the prize, at twenty-eight, and the book was the longest novel to have won it. Those distinctions make it memorable, and memorability is exactly what a distractor needs. A candidate who recognises the title as 'a Booker book' and stops there will treat recognition as knowledge and lose the mark. The discipline the question demands is to attach a year to each title before entering the examination hall, because the four titles here are indistinguishable on any other test.  (d) 'Bring Up the Bodies', which the English column prints in lower case, is Hilary Mantel's novel of 2012 and won the Booker Prize that year. It is the second volume of her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, following 'Wolf Hall', which had itself won the prize in 2009; the double win made Mantel the first woman and the first British author to take the Booker twice. It is thus the most decorated of the three wrong options and, for a candidate who reads fiction, the most familiar — which is why it sits at the end of the list. The distance from 2020 is eight years. Note the printing: the published title capitalises 'Up' and 'Bodies', while the paper does not, and the card reproduces the paper's form without correcting it.

Concept: The Booker Prize is the best-known literary award in the English-speaking world and is given each year for a single novel written originally in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Its eligibility rules have changed in a way worth remembering: for most of its history it was open only to writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and, later, Zimbabwe, and from 2014 it was opened to novelists of any nationality, which brought American writers into contention and produced Paul Beatty's win in 2016. It must be kept separate from the International Booker Prize, a distinct award for a book translated into English, in which the prize money is divided equally between the author and the translator — a distinction that matters because Indian writers have appeared on both lists for different reasons. Indian and Indian-origin winners of the Booker Prize itself include V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga; on the International Booker side, 'Tomb of Sand' by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, won in 2022. For the 2020 award the winner was Douglas Stuart's 'Shuggie Bain', a first novel about a childhood in Glasgow during the collapse of the city's industry, notable both as a debut and as only the second Scottish win in the prize's history to that date.

State PCS 2021 Q92 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2021 Q92 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer