The Booker Prizes

1 week ago | thebookerprizes.com | Margaret Atwood |Stephen Snyder |Hiromi Kawakami |Asa Yoneda

‘Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do,’ Margaret Atwood famously said, often considered mother of the genre. ‘Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.’  Her comment emerged during a long-running (and occasionally heated) debate – one that saw her butt heads with SF titan Ursula K. Le Guin, who countered that speculative fiction is science fiction, and that trying to draw a line between them was merely splitting hairs.

2 weeks ago | thebookerprizes.com | Anne Serre |Mark Hutchinson |Max Porter |Solvej Balle

The six books on the shortlist have been chosen by the 2025 judging panel: bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter; prize-winning poet, director and photographer Caleb Femi; writer and Publishing Director of Wasafiri Sana Goyal; author and International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Anton Hur; and award-winning singer-songwriter Beth Orton.

2 weeks ago | thebookerprizes.com | Jonathan Cape |Margaret Atwood

Skip to main content Win one of three bundles including a copy of our Monthly Spotlight title for April, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, plus a limited-edition Booker Prize tote bag Publication date and time: Published April 4, 2025To celebrate our Monthly Spotlight for April, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, we are giving you the chance to win a bundle of novels by the author, plus a limited-edition Booker Prize tote bag.

2 weeks ago | thebookerprizes.com | Jonathan Cape |Margaret Atwood

Skip to main content Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1986, The Handmaid’s Tale is the dystopian novel that became a phenomenonThe Handmaid’s Tale was Atwood’s sixth novel – a chilling work of speculative fiction that masterfully examines gender, power, and resistance. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1986 and won the first-ever Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987, and has since become a modern classic, inspiring adaptations across film, television, theatre, and ballet.

2 weeks ago | thebookerprizes.com | Jonathan Cape |Margaret Atwood

Skip to main content In Margaret Atwood’s feminist dystopian classic, nothing happens ‘that hasn’t already happened at some time or another’Offred is a national resource. In the Republic of Gilead her viable ovaries make her a precious commodity, and the state allows her only one function: to breed. As a Handmaid she carries no name except her Master’s, for whose barren wife she must act as a surrogate.