BOOK AWARDS

BOOK AWARDS

‘Lost Booker Prize’

LONDON — More than three decades after Iris Murdoch won Britain’s top literary award, and a decade after her death, she and 21 other writers who published novels in English in 1970 has a chance to win another award: The “lost” Booker Prize. The books were never considered for the prize at the time because originally the Booker was awarded to any book published in the previous year. But, in 1971, it became a prize for the best novel of that year. That meant that a raft of books published in 1970 were left out in the cold, and the Lost Man Booker Prize is an attempt to remedy the oversight.

Among those vying for the honor are Murdoch’s “A Fairly Honourable Defeat,” “The Fire Dwellers” by Margaret Laurence, Len Deighton’s “Bomber,” “A Guilty Thing Surprised,” by Ruth Rendell, and “A Clubbable Woman,” by Reginald Hill. All the books on the list are still in print and available today. Murdoch won her Booker in 1978 for “The Sea, The Sea.”

The winner will be decided by a public vote on the Man Booker Prize Web site — www.themanbookerprize.com — and announced in May.

Poe awards

Who doesn’t like a good mystery? The answer: “practically no one,” to judge by the number of mysteries that show up regularly on the nation’s best-seller lists.

In that spirit, the Mystery Writers of America have announced nominees for the annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards.

The awards will be given to the most distinguished writers in mystery fiction and fact, published or produced in 2009 (including television).

To see a complete list of the nominees, visit www.mysterywriters.org.