The Booker Prize for Fiction has announced a new international competition, starting next year, and running every second year.

It’s always been a prize reserved for citizens of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The new award, worth £60,000, can be won by an author of any nationality, as long as their book is available in English.

Harvey McGrath, chairman of sponsors the Man Group, said it ‘would extend the UK-based Booker's global influence’. And John Carey, chair of the judges for the inaugural prize, said grandly, ‘This new prize will reward high international achievement, but unlike other global prizes, it will target fiction in English, or translated into English, and so will celebrate English-language fiction as a major cultural force in the modern world.’ Hm. Does that sound a tiny bit... scary to anyone else?

Last year’s Man Booker Prize was won by DBC ‘Dirty But Clean’ Pierre for Vernon God Little. Incidentally, there’s a LeafSalon review soon to come on that. I’m lovin’ it; guess them Booker folk must know what they’s doin’.