LONDON: British novelist David Lodge, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice, died on New Year’s day at the age of 89, his publisher said on Friday.

The English author was best known for Small World and Nice Work, which were nominated for the prestigious literary award in the 1980s.

“He died peacefully on New Year’s Day,” Penguin Random House said, without giving a cause of death.

“His contribution to literary culture was immense, both in his criticism and through his masterful and iconic novels which have already become classics,” Lodge’s publisher, Liz Foley, said.

David Lodge’s family said “we are very proud” of the writer, who was renowned for his plays, memoirs and TV scripts, as well as his books.

Small World (1984) and Nice Work (1988) came after Changing Places (1975) and made up his campus trilogy series about a fictional university called Rummidge.

It followed professors Philip Swallow from England and Morris Zapp from the United States and the cultural challenges they face when they swap universities for six months.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2025