Who won the 1987 Booker Prize for Moon Tiger?

Penelope Lively won the 1987 Booker Prize for *Moon Tiger*.

The novel centres on Claudia Hampton, a former war correspondent and historian lying in a hospital bed. As she approaches death, Claudia tries to write a history of the world, but her memories repeatedly turn that project into a fragmented history of her own life.

Her recollections move through childhood, family relationships, motherhood and wartime Egypt. The novel’s shifting perspectives question whether any life can be represented as one stable, complete story. Its title comes from a mosquito-repelling incense coil, an image connected with Claudia’s memories of Egypt.

Lively had already been shortlisted twice, for *The Road to Lichfield* in 1977 and *According to Mark* in 1984, before finally winning. The other names in the options are associated with different Booker histories: Keri Hulme won in 1985, Anita Brookner in 1984, and Margaret Atwood won later, in 2000.