Ann Schlee News Today

Ann Schlee, who has died aged 89, was one of those rare novelists who found success writing for both children and adults. The Vandal, a dystopian tale of alienation in Thatcherite Britain, won the 1980 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, while Rhine Journey, the story of a Victorian spinster’s emotional awakening on a European excursion, was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize and was nearly adapted by Tom Stoppard into a script.

She was admired by Tom Stoppard, Olivia Manning and Jane Gardam and possessed ‘a gift for enabling the reader to enter a past world’

The Proprietor by Schlee, Ann - ISBN 10: 0030639484 - ISBN 13: 9780030639487 - Macmillan - 1983 - Hardcover

For more than 50 years, authors have vied to win the Booker Prize, whose 2021 winner will be announced on 3 November. Charlotte Higgins dives into the teeming, fractious history of the UK’s most prestigious fiction award