The Big Jubilee Read is a 2022 campaign to promote reading for pleasure and to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. A list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, 10 from each decade of Elizabeth II's reign, was selected by a panel of experts and announced by the BBC and The Reading Agency on 18 April 2022.[1][2][3]

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Selection process

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An initial long-list was compiled from readers' suggestions, and a panel of librarians, booksellers and "literature specialists" made the choice of 70 titles, aiming "to engage all readers in the discovery and celebration of great books". The project received funding from the Arts Council and is supported by Libraries Connected[4] and the Booksellers Association.[3]

The organisers hope that the project will "celebrate the joy of reading and the power that it has to connect people across the country and among nations".[5] Nineteen of the books are winners of the Booker Prize.[6] Most of the books are novels written in English, but there are also poetry collections such as Death of a Naturalist and short story collections including The Boat, while One Moonlit Night was published in Welsh as Un Nos Ola Leuad, Le Procès-Verbal and Our Lady of the Nile were originally in French, and Shuggie Bain is in English but with dialogue in Scots.[7][8][9][10]

The list

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The list was published by the BBC on 18 April 2022.[11]

Title Author Year Country
(as stated in official list)
The Palm-Wine Drinkard Amos Tutuola 1952   Nigeria
The Hills Were Joyful Together Roger Mais 1953   Jamaica
In the Castle of My Skin George Lamming 1953   Barbados
My Bones and My Flute Edgar Mittelholzer 1955   Guyana
The Lonely Londoners Sam Selvon 1956   Trinidad and Tobago
  England
The Guide R. K. Narayan 1958   India
To Sir, With Love E. R. Braithwaite 1959   Guyana
One Moonlit Night Caradog Prichard 1961   Wales
A House for Mr Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961   Trinidad and Tobago
  England
Sunlight on a Broken Column Attia Hosain 1961   India
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962   England
The Interrogation J. M. G. Le Clézio 1963   France
  Mauritius
The Girls of Slender Means Muriel Spark 1963   Scotland
Arrow of God Chinua Achebe 1964   Nigeria
Death of a Naturalist Seamus Heaney 1966 Northern Ireland
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966   Dominica
  Wales
A Grain of Wheat Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 1967   Kenya
Picnic at Hanging Rock Joan Lindsay 1967   Australia
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born Ayi Kwei Armah 1968   Ghana
When Rain Clouds Gather Bessie Head 1968   Botswana
  South Africa
The Nowhere Man Kamala Markandaya 1972   India
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carré 1974   England
The Thorn Birds Colleen McCullough 1977   Australia
The Crow Eaters Bapsi Sidhwa 1978   Pakistan
The Sea, the Sea Iris Murdoch 1978   England
Who Do You Think You Are? Alice Munro 1978   Canada
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979   England
Tsotsi Athol Fugard 1980   South Africa
Clear Light of Day Anita Desai 1980   India
Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981   England
  India
Schindler's Ark Thomas Keneally 1982   Australia
Beka Lamb Zee Edgell 1982   Belize
The Bone People Keri Hulme 1984   New Zealand
The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985   Canada
Summer Lightning Olive Senior 1986   Jamaica
The Whale Rider Witi Ihimaera 1987   New Zealand
The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989   England
Omeros Derek Walcott 1990   Saint Lucia
The Adoption Papers Jackie Kay 1991   Scotland
Cloudstreet Tim Winton 1991   Australia
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje 1992   Canada
  Sri Lanka
The Stone Diaries Carol Shields 1993   Canada
Paradise Abdulrazak Gurnah 1994   Tanzania
  England
A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995   India
  Canada
Salt Earl Lovelace 1996   Trinidad and Tobago
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997   India
The Blue Bedspread Raj Kamal Jha 1999   India
Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999   South Africa
  Australia
White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000   England
Life of Pi Yann Martel 2001   Canada
Small Island Andrea Levy 2004   England
The Secret River Kate Grenville 2005   Australia
The Book Thief Markus Zusak 2005   Australia
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2006   Nigeria
A Golden Age Tahmima Anam 2007   Bangladesh
The Boat Nam Le 2008   Australia
Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009   England
The Book of Night Women Marlon James 2009   Jamaica
The Memory of Love Aminatta Forna 2010   Sierra Leone
  Scotland
Chinaman Shehan Karunatilaka 2010   Sri Lanka
Our Lady of the Nile Scholastique Mukasonga 2012   Rwanda
The Luminaries Eleanor Catton 2013   New Zealand
Behold the Dreamers Imbolo Mbue 2016   Cameroon
The Bone Readers Jacob Ross 2016   Grenada
How We Disappeared Jing-Jing Lee 2019   Singapore
Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo 2019   England
The Night Tiger Yangsze Choo 2019   Malaysia
Shuggie Bain Douglas Stuart 2020   Scotland
A Passage North Anuk Arudpragasam 2021   Sri Lanka
The Promise Damon Galgut 2021   South Africa

Commonwealth nations by number of books

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Where an author is given two countries of origin in the above list, 0.5 is given to each country.

Country Books Population
(millions, 2022)
  England 11 68
  Australia 7.5 26
  India 7 1,417
  Canada 5 39
  Scotland 3.5 5.5
  Jamaica 3 3.0
  New Zealand 3 5.1
  Nigeria 3 218
  Sri Lanka 2.5 22
  Guyana 2 0.8
  Trinidad and Tobago 2 1.4
  Wales 1.5 3.2
  Grenada 1 0.1
  Saint Lucia 1 0.2
  Barbados 1 0.3
  Belize 1 0.4
 Northern Ireland 1 1.9
  Singapore 1 5.6
  Rwanda 1 14
  Cameroon 1 28
  Malaysia 1 33
  Kenya 1 57
  Bangladesh 1 169
  Pakistan 1 231
  Dominica 0.5 0.1
  Mauritius 0.5 1.3
  Botswana 0.5 2.3
  Sierra Leone 0.5 8.4
  Ghana 0.5 33
  Tanzania 0.5 64
  France[a] 0.5 66
  1. ^ Not a Commonwealth nation.

Omissions and other issues

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Commentators discussed several omissions of potential titles: J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (ranked number 1 in the 2003 The Big Read); J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books;[12] Terry Pratchett's Discworld series;[13] Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy,[14] Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook;[12] and the work of Dick Francis, reportedly one of the Queen's favourite authors.[14] The inclusion of Northern Irish writer Seamus Heaney was explained by the fact that when he wrote Death of a Naturalist he was living in the UK and published by an English publisher; Heaney identified as an Irish nationalist and had previously objected to his inclusion in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry.[15][16]

In The Telegraph, Allison Pearson called it a "'You'll take your medicine and like it' kind of list compiled by people who were scared stiff of not being diverse enough."[17] Similarly, in The Article, David Herman complained: "If you like Hornblower or James Bond, witches and hobbits, great children's literature, popular poetry or drama, The Big Jubilee Read doesn't care. What it does care about is post-colonial, ideally non-white, literature."[18]

References

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  1. ^ Lambert, Doug (17 April 2022). "BBC Arts announce titles for the Big Jubilee Read". ATV Today. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  2. ^ "The Reading Agency and BBC Arts launch national reading campaign to mark Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee". readingagency.org.uk. Reading Agency. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  3. ^ a b "The Big Jubilee Read". The Reading Agency. Retrieved 18 April 2022. Includes list of titles with images of covers
  4. ^ "Libraries from home". www.librariesconnected.org.uk. Libraries Connected. Retrieved 24 April 2022. Libraries Connected is proud to support The Reading Agency and BBC Arts' Big Jubilee Read
  5. ^ Bayley, Sian (1 March 2022). "Reading Agency launches The Big Jubilee Read". The Bookseller. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  6. ^ "The Big Jubilee Read x The Booker Prize". thebookerprizes.com. The Booker Prizes. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  7. ^ "Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart". ANGELINE KING. 1 December 2020.
  8. ^ Wade, Mike (17 May 2021). "Douglas Stuart's Glasgow is changing fast. Will Shuggie Bain feel at home?". The Times.
  9. ^ "Bahoochie". 26 August 2021.
  10. ^ Guinness, Emma (25 January 2022). "Modern Scots language should be celebrated the same as Robert Burns". The National.
  11. ^ "A literary celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's record-breaking reign". BBC. 17 April 2022. Retrieved 18 April 2022. The full list
  12. ^ a b Sherwood, Harriet (18 April 2022). "The God of Small Things to Shuggie Bain: the Queen's jubilee book list". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  13. ^ Power, Ed (18 April 2022). "The fantasy-free Platinum Jubilee reading list is pure literary snobbery". The Telegraph. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  14. ^ a b Griffiths, Sian (17 April 2022). "The Big Jubilee Read — 70 books fit for Queen and country". The Times. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  15. ^ Reid, Kurtis (18 April 2022). "Seamus Heaney's work to be included as part of Queen's platinum jubilee books". Belfast Telegraph. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  16. ^ McClements, Freya (19 December 2020). "'My passport's green': why was Seamus Heaney used in Northern Ireland branding?". The Irish Times.
  17. ^ Pearson, Allison (21 April 2022). "The real best reads of Her Majesty's reign". The Telegraph.
  18. ^ Herman, David (26 April 2022). "What went wrong with the Big Jubilee Read?". TheArticle.
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  • "Big Jubilee Read". The Reading Agency. Lists of titles, by decade, with cover image for each title and a paragraph about the decade in Commonwealth literature; links to a book description for every title