Silicon Valley Billionaire Michael Moritz To Fund Booker Prize

London: Silicon Valley billionaire Michael Moritz and his wife Harriet Heyman’s charitable foundation ‘Crankstart’ will be the new supporter of the Booker Prize, its trustees announced on Thursday. The announcement came a month after the Man Group said it was ending its sponsorship of the prestigious award for literary fiction. The new arrangement will begin on June 1 after the 2019 Man Booker International Prize winner announcement, which will also mark the conclusion of 18 years of sponsorship by Man Group, the Booker Prize Foundation said. Thereafter, the original prize will once again be known as The Booker Prize, while the prize for literature in translation will become The International Booker Prize.

The prize has also been instrumental in providing international recognition to prominent Indian novelists such as Arundhati Roy (winner 1997 for ‘The God of Small Things’), Kiran Desai (winner 2006 for ‘The Inheritance of Loss’), Aravind Adiga (winner 2009 for ‘The White Tiger’), along with Amitav Ghosh, Anuradha Roy and Jeet Thayil, whose novels have been shortlisted in the past. (IANS)

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