The Queen Consort presents the 2022 Booker Prize for Fiction
Published
At a reception at the Roundhouse in London, The Queen Consort presented Shehan Karunatilaka with the 2022 Booker Prize.
The 2022 Booker Prize was the first in-person ceremony since 2019, and the seventh time Her Majesty has presented the award.
The award ceremony got underway with a reception, where The Queen Consort had the opportunity to meet the shortlisted authors, judges and performers.
The shortlisted titles and authors for this years prize were: NoViolet Bulawayo for Glory; Percival Everett for The Trees; Alan Garner for Treacle Walker, Shehan Karunatilaka for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida; Claire Keegan for Small Things Like These and Elizabeth Strout for Oh William!.
Following the reception and dinner, Her Majesty was invited on stage to presented the winning author, Shehan Karunatilaka, with the Prize for his novel 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida'.
The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world. It was first awarded in 1969 and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades.
Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best work of long-form fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland, irrespective of the nationality or citizenship of the author.
The Queen Consort and Literacy
The Queen Consort is recognised as an important supporter for literacy in the UK and internationally. As a grandmother, Her Majesty understands the joy of reading, but also the importance of literacy in creating life opportunities.
Her Majesty has visited schools and libraries, as well as workplace reading schemes and prisons to see the work of adult literacy schemes. During Lockdown in 2020, Her Majesty published a list of her 9 favourite book recommendations over the Easter weekend, and shared 5 more in August.
The hugely positive response to these lists prompted Her Majesty to create an online space to continue this conversation, and in January 2021 The Reading Room Instagram account was launched – a community space for book lovers to visit, and to see videos, photographs and commentary from some of Her Majesty’s recommended authors. The Reading Room has gone on to attract over 150,000 followers.
