5. INTERCULTURAL INFLUENCES AND MANIFESTATIONS
The inheritance of the English language and literature, the common law, and British systems of administration all strengthen the club-like atmosphere of the Commonwealth.
Mostly due to their history of British rule, many Commonwealth nations share certain identifiable traditions and customs that are elements of a shared Commonwealth culture. Examples include common sports such as cricket and rugby, legal traditions, and the use of British spelling conventions. None of these are universal within the Commonwealth countries, or exclusive to them, but all of them are more common in the Commonwealth than elsewhere.
5.1. INTERCULTURALITY AND LITERARY PRODUCTION
The shared history of British rule has also produced a substantial body of writing in many languages – Commonwealth literature. There is an Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 
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- In 1987, the Commonwealth Foundation established the Commonwealth Writers Prize “to encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin”.
- In 2011 the prize became the Commonwealth Book Prize. It was reconceptualized as an honour for best first book only, with one overall winner drawn from the regional winners from Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. After 2013 the prize was no longer awarded. Commonwealth Writers, the branch of the Commonwealth Foundation that organized the prize, instead directed its resources to a short story award created in 2012 .
notable PRIZE WINNERS included:
- MARGARET ATWOOD: a Canadian author, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published eighteen books of poetry, eighteen novels, eleven books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honours for her writing. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television (The Handmaid’s Tale).
- ALICE MUNRO: Canadian short story writer who has received many literary accolades, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time.
- ROHINTON MISTRY: Indian-born Canadian writer. He has been the recipient of many awards. Each of his first three novels were shortlisted for the Booker Prize (Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance, Family Matters). His novels to date have been set in India, told from the perspective of Parsis, and explore themes of family life, poverty, discrimination, and the corrupting influence of society.
- J.M. COETZEE: He is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. In recent years, he's become a vocal critic of cruelty to animals and an advocate of animal rights. Coetzee's fiction has similarly engaged with animal cruelty and animal welfare, especially The Lives of Animals, Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello, and The Old Woman and the Cats.
- PETER CAREY: He is an Australian novelist known for featuring the surreal in his short stories and novels. His collections of short stories, The Fat Man in History and War Crimes, exhibit many grotesque and macabre elements. His novels Bliss, Illywhacker, and Oscar and Lucinda are more realistic, though Carey used black humour throughout all three. The later novels are based on the history of Australia, especially its founding and early days.
- SALMAN RUSHDIE: He is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
- ZADIE SMITH.She is a British author known for her treatment of race, religion, and cultural identity and for her novels’ eccentric characters, savvy humour, and snappy dialogue. She became a sensation in the literary world with the publication of her first novel, White Teeth, in 2000.
- KATE GREENVILLE: Australian novelist whose works of historical fiction examine class, race, and gender in colonial and contemporary Australia. Her first book, Bearded Ladies, was a collection of short stories that explored gender, power and Australian national identity, all of which would remain central to her later work.
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