The Booker Prize and the Booker Prize Foundation
RNIB is very proud to work with the Booker Prize Foundation to ensure shortlisted titles in the Booker Prize are available in accessible formats for everyone to enjoy.
What is the Booker Prize?
The Booker Prize was established in 1969 as a literary prize awarded annually for the best original novel written in English and published in the UK. In 2005, The Booker International Prize was created to award writers bi-annually in recognition of a body of work rather than one title.
Former winners of the prize include many of the literary giants of the last five decades, from Iris Murdoch and Salman Rushdie to Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel.
Our involvement in the Booker Prize
RNIB has worked with the Booker Prize Foundation for over a decade to ensure that some of the year’s best novels are made available to blind and partially sighted people. Book titles are not always automatically produced in alternative reading formats such as audio or braille, which means people with sight loss often have to wait longer to get hold of the latest and most popular books.
We work with the Booker Prize Foundation to make sure the shortlisted titles in the Booker Prize are produced in all formats as close to the shortlist announcement as possible. The Booker Prize Foundation funds the production of the shortlisted titles in braille and audio (Talking Books), making the titles available to over 50,000 members of RNIB Library.
