Bernice Rubens (1923 – 2004, E) was a Welsh novelist from Splott, Cardiff. She became the first woman to win the Booker Prize. Her father was a Lithuanian Jew who in 1900, at the age of just 16, left mainland Europe for New York City. Swindled by a ticket tout, he never reached the U.S. and ended up in Cardiff. He stayed in Wales and met and married Dorothy Cohen, whose Polish family had also emigrated to Cardiff. Bernice was a talented musician but read English at Cardiff University.
Her first novel, Set on Edge, was published in 1960 but it is her fifth book, The Elected Member, that she won the Booker Prize in 1970, which made her the first woman to do so and the only Welsh writer to date.
Her 1962 novel, Madame Sousatzka, was made into a film in 1988, with Shabana Azmi and Shirley MacLaine. This book was based on the experiences of her brother Harold Rubens, a child prodigy pianist, and his teacher Madame Maria Levinskaya.
Works:
- Set on Edge (1960)
- Madame Sousatzka (1962) (filmed as Madame Sousatzka)
- Mate in Three (1966)
- Chosen People (1969)
- The Elected Member (1969) (Booker Prize for Fiction 1970)
- Sunday Best (1971)
- Go Tell the Lemming (1973)
- I Sent a Letter To My Love (1975)
- The Ponsonby Post (1977)
- A Five-Year Sentence (1978)
- Spring Sonata (1979)
- Birds of Passage (1981)
- Brothers (1983)
- Mr Wakefield’s Crusade (1985)
- Our Father (1987)
- Kingdom Come (1990)
- A Solitary Grief (1991)
- Mother Russia (1992)
- Autobiopsy (1993)
- Hijack (1993)
- Yesterday in the Back Lane (1995)
- The Waiting Game (1997)
- I, Dreyfus (1999)
- Milwaukee (2001)
- Nine Lives (2002)
- The Sergeants’ Tale (2003)
- When I Grow Up (2005)