Booker Prize 1977: Complete list of winners

Paul Scott’s Staying On claimed the 1977 Booker Prize, marking a poignant moment in the storied history of Britain’s most prestigious literary award. Scott’s novel, a graceful coda to his monumental Raj Quartet, tells the story of an elderly British couple remaining in India long after independence—a meditation on loyalty, displacement, and the impossibility of returning home. The win represented recognition not just for a single work, but for Scott’s masterful exploration of the end of empire, a theme that would define much of the literary conversation in the decades to come.

The Booker Prize in 1977 was already established as the award that could make or break a literary career, and Scott’s victory cemented his place among the most important postcolonial writers in English literature. At a time when Britain was still processing its relationship with its former colonial holdings, Staying On offered a nuanced, deeply human perspective on what happens when the old order fades away. Scott’s win resonated beyond the literary world, signaling that the Booker Prize—the Man Booker Prize as it would later be known—was committed to recognizing fiction that grappled seriously with history and national identity.

Below, you’ll find the complete details of this year’s Booker Prize winner and the literary moment it captured.

Fiction

• Staying On by Paul Scott