And the winner is...

On the Booker Prize (and me!)

(The Booker Prize statue)

On Monday, Paul Lynch, an Irish writer, won the Booker Prize for his novel “Prophet Song.”

The novel, as described by the New York Times, “imagines a near-future Ireland descending into totalitarianism, then a civil war that leads to families fleeing the country.”

Ahem.

Now, unless you are a literary type, you may be unaware of the Booker Prize. It’s an annual literary prize given to the best fiction published in Britain or Ireland and written in English.

There’s a cash prize (a little over $60,000) but the real win is the prestige of adding your name to a list that includes past winners like Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood and V.S. Naipaul to name just a few.

It’s a very big deal in England — so big that bookies set odds on the winner. (We don’t have a similar award in America — sadly, we are a country less interested in literary fiction — although I suppose the Pulitzer Prize for fiction is similar-ish.)

The Booker Prize has a very special place in my heart because — 26 years ago — I got to go to the ceremony where it was handed out.

I went to college thinking I was going to be a novelist. I had written a bunch of short stories (unpublished!) in high school. I had big dreams of writing the Great American Novel. Or at least a great American novel.

I took a bunch of English and writing classes. In my junior year, one of my teachers — a British Jesuit priest — happened to have three tickets to the Booker ceremony.

While I would love to say I won one of them because of some great piece of writing I did, that’s not how it went. In fact, he drew names out of a hat — one male student and one female student. Mine was the male name.

And so, I was the recipient of an all-expenses paid trip to London — the first time I had ever been out of the country (unless you count Canada, which I don’t).

It was, for me, incredibly eye-opening. Obviously because London is an amazing town to be young in. But also because I got a chance, however brief, to be exposed to literary culture.

To be around people who made their living writing (and reading) made me understand that maybe I could do this too. That the writerly life was not just possible but worthy — admirable even.

The winner of the Booker Prize that year — 1997 — was “The God of Small Things,” a work of magical realism by Arundhati Roy. It was (and is) excellent. (I actually read all the books nominated for the prize that year; I LOVED “Quarantine” by Jim Crace and “Grace Notes” by Bernard MacLaverty.)

I remember the ceremony like it happened yesterday. It was that foundational for me. And to this day — more than two and a half decades later — I still follow the Booker, and try to read the novel that wins it.

That experience isn’t the only reason why I decided to write for a living. But man it was a big reason. All because my name got pulled from a hat.