3 Booker Books to Make into Movies

Booker books have been adapted into many great movies such as The English Patient and Schindler's List. These are three more novels from Booker winners that should be made into movies.

Enduring Love: This Ian McEwan novel would work just as well made into a movie as his Booker winner Atonement did. It's an entertaining and insightful thriller about a guy named Joe who tries to help at the scene of an accident and winds up being stalked by another man whose endless messages of love reveal cracks in Joe's relationship with his girlfriend. The casting could feature Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow as the attractive couple, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the stalker whose benign appearance conceals darker motives. Considering his mastery of thrillers with disturbed characters, get Atom Egoyan to direct a movie of this Booker book.

Waiting for the Barbarians: J. M. Coetzee has won a Nobel Prize and 2 Booker Prizes, but I still don't think he gets enough recognition. His novels raise important moral questions, and this early fable is well suited for film. It's set in an imaginary empire but examines real issues about the abuse of power between nations and between people as imperial bureaucrats square off against those they label as barbarians. John Hurt who looks so gaunt and suffering could play the local magistrate whose world turns upside down. The barbarian woman with whom he gets involved should not be played by a professional actress, but by a local woman wherever this Booker book gets filmed as Werner Herzog has done in earlier movies. In fact, Werner Herzog should direct any film made from this Booker winner given his penchant for conflicts on a grand scale.

Wolf Hall: Hilary Mantel's 2009 Booker winner about Thomas Cromwell and the Tudor court should be made into a movie to combat all the trashy distortions of the period. Even if you like great earlier movies like A Man for All Seasons, it's interesting to see Mantel's different interpretation of Cromwell and Sir Thomas More. Plus, with about 6 pages of characters, it could put much of the UK back to work. Bob Hoskins would be perfect for the shrewd Cromwell who temporarily rises to fame despite being ridiculed as a brewer's son. Kevin Branagh could direct and play Henry VIII in a film of this Booker book.

All these Booker winners would make great movies, and introduce these Booker books to wider audiences.