LONDON - British novelist David Lodge, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice, has died at the age of 89, his publisher said.
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.
Lodge's family said they were "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.
Lodge garnered a worldwide following for his comical, cynical take on middle-class life in more than a dozen novels, many mining the worlds of academia and Catholicism.
In 2008, the Guardian newspaper described him as "one of Britain's best-loved comic writers", while "A Clockwork Orange" author Anthony Burgess called Lodge "one of the best novelists of his generation".
As well as novels, Lodge wrote extensive literary criticism in academic journals, two fictional biographies -- on authors Henry James and H. G. Wells -- and two volumes of his memoirs.
Lodge continued to draw from his own life for fresh inspiration for his fiction, including his late onset deafness which is at the heart of his 13th novel, "Deaf Sentence" (2008).
"I have been rather cautious," Lodge told The Guardian in 2008, explaining how he had found the time to write when he had also been working full-time in academia.
"I've stayed in one place. Having a stable married life is important. People who get into divorce, remarriage, custody and all that. It's terribly consuming of time and energy."
Lodge's wife died in January 2022.