Man Booker Prize Winners & Finalists (1981)

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Publisher's Comments:

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight , the midnight of
India's independence, and finds himself mysteriously "handcuffed to history" by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent — and whose privilege and curse it is to be both master and victims of their times. Through Saleem's gifts — inner voices and a wildly sensitive sense of smell — we are drawn into a fascinating family saga set against the vast, colourful background of the India of this century.

Publisher's Comments:

Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St. Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St. Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St. Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.

This elegant and elusive novel coming after years of silence establishes Molly Keane as the natural successor to Jean Rhys.

Publisher's Comments:

Ambien II is one of The Five, the highest level of the Sirian Colonial Service, who have been the hidden rulers of Sirius for many thousands of years. She is a competent, skilled administrator and manipulator of populations and events—in essence a bureaucrat, but according to the demands of the Sirian Empire, for she is always and everywhere first of all a Sirian official, though she does try to temper severity with compassion and believes herself to be something of a liberal.

The Sirian Empire thinks very well of itself, imagines itself the crown of the Galaxy, despises the Canopean Empire, seeing it as a rival. In reality Canopus is in advance of Sirius in every way and is in fact ruler of the Galaxy. Canopus , having defeated Sirius in war, behaved magnanimously, and thereafter has been trying to lift Sirius to its own level, but in subtle and long-term ways. Ambien II is the individual whom Canopus uses to introduce higher and nobler ideas to the Sirian Empire. She has no inkling of this—not for long ages. But slowly she comes to see how much there is to learn from Canopus.

This book is an account, from the point of view of Ambien II, of her growth into an understanding of the comparative barbarity of Sirius, of her own barbarousness and crudity—the beginnings of her comprehension of how great and marvelous a creation the Canopean Empire is. She is writing an account of the relations of Canopus and Sirius that contradicts that of the official historians, and this act is part of a power struggle that is convulsing the Sirian Empire and will transform it. The Sirian Experiments is the third book in Doris Lessing's sequence Canopus in Argos: Archives , which she began in Shikasta and continued in The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five . But her space age saga is in no sense merely a record of celestial events but more a form in which we may dare to face the consequences of our own actions and the destiny to which we are being drawn.

Publisher's Comments:

As their holiday unfolds, Colin and Maria are locked into their own intimacy. They groom themselves meticulously, as though someone is waiting for them who cares deeply about how they appear. When they meet a man with a disturbing story to tell, they become drawn into a fantasy of violence and obsession.

Publisher's Comments:

On the surface, she was the unmarried Victorian aunt, whose sparse unfulfilled life echoed the expectations of those she drudged for.

But, happily boating down the Rhine with her brother and his wife, the sight of a fellow traveler, Edward Newman, releases the hissing floodwaters of her subconscious. Dark and dangerous, they sweep Charlotte onward towards the watershed of her life.

Publisher's Comments:

“How wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.” The year is 1949, the place London , the speaker Fleur Talbot, an aspiring young writer on “the grubby edge of the literary world.” Loitering With Intent is her memoir of that time in her life when “I went on my way rejoicing.” That way, as in any novel by Muriel Spark, is full of unexpected plot twists, wonderfully contradictory characters, and dialog of matchless wit. When Fleur becomes secretary to the Autobiographical Association, a motley collection of egoists who are composing their memoirs “in advance” (to avoid lapses in memory), she uncovers material that would delight any budding novelist. From the pompous Sir Quentin Oliver, who may or may not be running an elaborate con game, to his protective housekeeper Beryl Tims and his hilarious mother, Lady Edwina (who becomes incontinent to suit her convenience), to the defrocked Father Delaney, and a host of others, Fleur can find the makings of several novels. What is perplexing, however, is that they seem to act out scenes she has already written. Loitering With Intent is a great comic novel about the serious matters of autobiography and the nature of the artist's method. “I was aware of a demon inside me that rejoiced in seeing people as they were,” Fleur says, as she loiters with the intent to create. Anyone who reads Muriel Spark's novel will rejoice that her own demon of observation is more accurate, funnier, and wiser than ever before. Loitering With Intent is a novel only Muriel Spark could have written, but that everyone can read with the deep pleasure a true artist provides.

Publisher's Comments:

By turns a dream of electrifying eroticism recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud, and a horrifying yet calmly unsensational narrative of the Holocaust, this PEN Silver Pen winner is now recognized as a modern classic that reconciles the nightmarish with the transcendent.

Longlist information for 1981 is not available; the Booker Prize did not release longlists until 2001.

Professor Malcolm Bradbury (Chair), Brian Aldiss, Joan Bakewell, Samuel Hynes, and Hermione Lee