The Booker Prize is awarded for fiction written in English.
The modern Booker Prize recognises the best sustained work of fiction originally written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Authors may come from any nationality, so the language rule is more important than the writer’s passport. This is why the prize has honoured authors from countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa and the United States.
The prize was first awarded in 1969 and originally had a narrower eligibility rule focused on writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and South Africa. Eligibility expanded in 2014, allowing writers of any nationality, provided their qualifying work was written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
A frequent confusion involves the International Booker Prize. That separate award is for fiction written in another language and translated into English, with the prize money shared by the author and translator. The regular Booker Prize, by contrast, is for fiction originally written in English; a translated edition does not make a work eligible for it.