Prize Winners

Literary prizes have flourished over the last few decades, with Wikipedia listing nearly fifty British book awards for fiction alone. In his academic study of cultural prizes The Economy of Prestige, James English describes a ‘feverish proliferation’ of new awards at the turn of the millennium. Prizes have become one of the dominant mechanisms for arbitrating cultural and aesthetic value. Concurrently, awards are sources of endless debate, with judges’ decisions sparking controversy after controversy while columnists deliberate over the effect of prizes on literary culture.