The Booker Prize, set up  in 1968, aims to reward the best novel of the year, raise the stature of the writer in the eyes of the public, and increase book sales generally. The selection of Booker judges from among leading literary critics, writers and academics has ensured its continued credibility.  In 1993, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary, three former chairmen of judges - Malcolm Bradbury, David Holloway and W.L. Webb - were asked to choose the book which they believed to be the best of the previous winners. Their "Booker of Bookers" was Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
 
 

Previous Booker Prize Winners

1969	P.H. Newby	Something to Answer For
1970	Bernice Rubens	The Elected Member
1971	V.S. Naipaul	In a Free State
1972	John Berger	G
1973	J.G. Farrell	The Siege of Krishnapur
1974	Nadine Gordimer  Stanley Middleton	The Conservationist Holiday
1975	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	Heat and Dust
1976	David Storey	Saville
1977	Paul Scott	Staying On
1978	Iris Murdoch	The Sea, the Sea
1979	Penelope Fitzgerald	Offshore
1980	William Golding	Rites of Passage
1981	Salman Rushdie	Midnight's Children
1982	Thomas Keneally	Schindler's Ark
1983	J.M. Coetzee	Life & Times of Michael K
1984	Anita Brookner	Hotel du Lac
1985	Keri Hulme	The Bone People
1986	Kingsley Amis	The Old Devils
1987	Penelope Lively	Moon Tiger
1988	Peter Carey	Oscar and Lucinda
1989	Kazuo Ishiguro	The Remains of the Day
1990	A.S. Byatt	Possession
1991	Ben Okri	The Famished Road
1992	Michael Ondaatje Barry Unsworth	The English Patient Sacred Hunger
1993	Roddy Doyle	Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994	James Kelman	How Late It Was, How Late
1995	Pat Barker	The Ghost Road
1996	Graham Swift	Last Orders
1997	Arundhati Roy	The God of Small Things
1998	Ian McEwan	Amsterdam
1999	J.M. Coetzee