G >>PROOF COPY, ANTI-SLAVERY BOOKER PRIZE WINNER<<

Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 5 Winsley Street, London W1, 1972 [6], 318 printed pages. Very small marginal rust stain on very edge of pages 116-20 (left from paper clip?). Publication date of 8.6.72 written in pencil on half title. Lower corners very slightly creased. 14 x 22 cm. original publishers printed and patterned orange card covers. The words"PROOF" and "Please Return to Eileen Ruxton 8054 B.H" (presumably an employee of the Blackwells Holdings company that owned the Blackwells bookshops) written on upper covers. Spine worn along the foot and along the hinges. Fore edge very slightly foxed. In 1972, the same year in which Ways of Seeing was published, Berger (1926-2017) won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and the Booker Prize. At the Booker Prize ceremony Berger criticized the sponsor Booker-McConnall for exploiting trade in the Caribbean for the past 130 years. "The modern poverty of the Caribbean is the direct result of this and similar exploitation," he said. He also later told everyone that he was going to give half his prize money to the Black Panthers - who were, as he explained, "the black movement with the socialist and revolutionary perspective that I find myself most in agreement with in this country".By giving half of the prize money to the British Black Panthers, Berger wanted to "turn the prize against itself" (a reference to the Caribbean sugar, or slave labour, that had fed the sponsor's wealth). Berger retained half the Booker Prize money to support his work on the study on migrant workers that became A Seventh Man, asserting that both endeavors represented aspects of his political struggle.. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Good/No Jacket.