2012 Man Booker Prize

The 2012 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded on 16 October 2012. A longlist of twelve titles was announced on 25 July, and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles, announced on 11 September. The jury was chaired by Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the ''Times Literary Supplement'', accompanied by literary critics Dinah Birch and Bharat Tandon, historian and biographer Amanda Foreman, and Dan Stevens, actor of ''Downton Abbey'' fame with a background English Literature studies. The jury was faced with the controversy of the 2011 jury, whose approach had been seen as overly populist. Whether or not as a response to this, the 2012 jury strongly emphasised the value of literary quality and linguistic innovation as criteria for inclusion.

The winner was Hilary Mantel, an early favourite, for her book '' Bring Up the Bodies'', the sequel to her novel ''Wolf Hall'', which won the award in 2009. Mantel became the first woman, and the first Briton, to win the prize twice. A strong challenger to Mantel was established writer Will Self, who was nominated for the first time. Other shortlisters included second-time nominee Tan Twan Eng, Deborah Levy, who returned from a long hiatus of publishing, and novelist débutantes Alison Moore and Jeet Thayil. In the days and weeks leading up to the announcement of the winner, both media commentators and bookmakers considered Mantel and Self favourites to win, with the other four nominees ranked as outsiders.

Background

The 2011 Man Booker Prize attracted a great deal of negative press. The jury's chair, General Director of the MI5 turned spy fiction writer Dame Stella Rimington, was criticised for her statement that what the jury was looking for in the winner was "readability". Likewise, jury member Chris Mullin, a former Labour MP, stated that he liked a novel to "zip along". Critics alleged that literary quality was ignored, and Robert McCrum of ''The Observer'' declared the nominations "one of the worst-ever shortlists". Rimington responded to the criticism by claiming that " ople weirder than me have chaired the Booker." Alex Clark, also of ''The Observer'', called the controversy a "straw man debate", contending that the shortlisted writers were "no more – and no less—"readable" than many other writers." Even McCrum had to admit that the winner, Julian Barnes for his '' The Sense of an Ending'', was worthy of the prize.

The 2012 jury took a different approach, in what was called "an implied rebuke" to the previous year's jury. Jury chair Peter Stothard did not explicitly criticise his predecessors, conceding that " viously there was a row last year, which was probably rather exaggerated like most rows are." Yet he made it clear that literary quality had been at the core of the jury's decisions when choosing the shortlist. "I'm afraid quite a lot of what counts for criticism these days is of that sort: how many stars did it get? Did I have a good time? Would my children like it? It is opinion masquerading as literary criticism." He added that what the jury was looking for was "the pure power of prose – the shock of language". This approach was reflected in the composition of the jury, with a core of literary critics and academics.

Jury

The chairman of the jury, Sir Peter Stothard, announced the composition of the jury in December 2011 with the following words:

Peter Stothard (chair)

Sir Peter Stothard is the Editor of the ''Times Literary Supplement''. Educated at the University of Oxford, he started his career in journalism at the BBC
...