Past Man Booker Prize Winners & Finalists (2002)

2003	2002	2001	2000	1999	1998	1997	1996	1995	1994
1993	1992	1991	1990	1989	1988	1987	1986	1985	1984
1983	1982	1981	1980	1979	1978	1977	1976	1975	1974
1973	1972	1971	1970	1969	Full List Tracking Sheet

2002
Book Cover	Book Details	Synopsis	TBS Rank
2002 Winner	Life of Pi by Yann Martel Publisher: Canongate Books ISBN: 0156027321	The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico , Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true?	2
	Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry Publisher: Faber & Faber ISBN: 037570342x	When Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance was published in 1995, it was hailed as “a masterpiece of illumination and grace” ( The Guardian , London ), and the New York Times said of Mistry himself: “He needs no infusions of magic realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical enough.” Now, with Family Matters , Mistry gives us a novel that confirms him as a writer whose work is “worthy of the nineteenth-century masters” ( Time ). The setting is Bombay , mid-1990s. Nariman Vakeel, suffering from Parkinson's disease, is the elderly patriarch of a small discordant family. In a building called Chateau Felicity, he and his two middle-aged stepchildren—Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her just-younger brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent—occupy a once-elegant apartment whose ruin is progressing as rapidly as Nariman's disease. Coomy has “rules to govern every aspect of [Nariman's] shrunken life,” but even she cannot keep him from his evening walks. When he stumbles and breaks an ankle (fulfilling one of Coomy's nagging prophecies), she has hardly said “I told you so” before she is plotting to turn his round-the-clock care over to her younger, sweet-tempered half sister. Roxana, her husband, and their two sons live in an already overcrowded apartment, but Coomy knows that Roxana will not refuse her. What Coomy cannot know is that she has set in motion a great unraveling (and an unexpected repair) of the family—and a revelation of its deeply love-torn past. Family Matters is a story of familial love and obligation, of memory's ability to keep truth alive, and of the danger of memory denied. At once sweeping and intimate, comic and tragic, it is a kaleidoscopic, profoundly affecting saga of home and heart.	3
	Unless by Carol Shields Publisher: Fourth Estate ISBN: 0007154615	"I'm not interested, the way some people are, in being sad. I've had a look, and there's nothing down that road. Well now! What about the ripping sound behind my eyes, the starchy tearing of fabric, end to end; what about the need I have to curl up my knees when I sleep?" For all of her life, 44 year old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light 'summertime' fiction. But this placid existence is cracked wide open when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads 'GOODNESS.' Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope. Warmth, passion and wisdom come together in Shields' remarkably supple prose. Unless, a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family's anguish and healing, proves her mastery of extraordinary fictions about ordinary life.	4
	The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor Publisher: Viking ISBN: 014200331x	From the award-winning author of Felicia's Journey and My House in Umbria , a new novel that "may well be his masterpiece" ( Philadelphia Inquirer ). The stunning new novel from highly acclaimed author William Trevor is a brilliant, subtle, and moving story of love, guilt, and forgiveness. The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland , but the threat of violence leads the parents of nine-year-old Lucy to decide to leave for England , her mother's home. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane, their country house with its beautiful land and nearby beach, and a dog she has befriended. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away, hoping to convince her parents to stay. Instead, she sets off a series of tragic misunderstandings that affect all of Lahardane's inhabitants for the rest of their lives.	5
	Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Publisher: Virago ISBN: 1573229725	From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Tipping the Velvet and the award-winning Affinity : a spellbinding, twisting tale of a great swindle, of fortunes and hearts won and lost, set in Victorian London among a family of thieves. Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves — fingersmiths — for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives — Gentleman, a somewhat elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud's vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be left to live out her days in a mental hospital. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways....But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and surprises. The New York Times Book Review has called Sarah Waters a writer of "consummate skill" and The Seattle Times has praised her work as "gripping, astute fiction that feeds the mind and the senses." Fingersmith marks a major leap forward in this young and brilliant career.	1
	Dirt Music by Tim Winton Publisher: Picdor ISBN: 0743228480	Luther Fox, a loner, haunted by his past, makes his living as an illegal fisherman -- a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, he grew melons and played guitar in the family band. Robbed of all that, he has turned his back on music. There's too much emotion in it, too much memory and pain. One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each o Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature. Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion -- and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.	6
Judges	Lisa Jardine, David Baddiel, Russell Celyn Jones, Salley Vickers, Erica Wagner