PJE's Booker Blog

Booker 2012: Even Posher Bingo?

2011-12-12T23:28:00.001Z

The judges for the 2012 Man Booker Prize have been announced, they are:

Dinah Birch, literary critic, editor of The Oxford Companion to English Literature and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool.

Amanda Foreman, historian, broadcaster and writer, best known for her biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

Bharat Tandon, academic, writer and reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement and The Daily Telegraph.

...and the actor Dan Stevens, who played Nick Guest in the TV adaptation of The Line of Beauty and is now one of the stars of ITV's posh-fest period drama Downton Abbey. He is also 'Editor-at-Large' of the online magazine The Junket.

Chairing their discussions will be Sir Peter Stothard, editor of The Times Literary Supplement. On his appointment Sir Peter said that he looked forward to "a year as a reader and critic within its great traditions."

Ah good! The 'great tradition' of the Booker Prize being lots of controversy, yes? *Rubs hands together*

Sameer Rahim in the Telegraph notes that Dan Stevens studied literary criticism under Bharat Tanon at Cambridge University and asks whether this is the first case of one judge having previously taught another. Could be. Another question that would take more research than I can be bothered with, is whether that Dan Stevens is the youngest judge ever, since he will only turn thirty a few days before the panel choose their winner on October 16th. *Tuts* I'm also tempted to suggest that, judging by the cover of The Line of Beauty DVD, he might also be the prettiest...

I will keep a list of eligible novels here. Feel free to let me know what I've missed.

Top of the Shop

2011-10-19T02:56:00.001+01:00

Julian Barnes' number finally came up last night when The Sense of an Ending won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for 2011. It was the fourth time he had been shortlisted, having previously been a runner-up with Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998) and Arthur and George (2005).

In an infamous 1987 article about the Booker Prize in The London Review of Books, Barnes had written that "the only sensible attitude to the Booker is to treat it as posh bingo. It is El Gordo, the Fat One, the sudden jackpot that enriches some plodding Andalusian muleteer." However, in a recent interview he was more equanimous: "I've had reasonably long experience of not winning - and I think I've exhausted all the ins and outs of that, so I wouldn't object to a change."

I am pleased that, 27 years after he should have won, Julian Barnes is finally a Booker Prize winner, especially as we are now spared the possibility of a ‘Best of Barnesy Booker Prize’. Personally I was somewhat nonplussed by some aspects of The Sense of an Ending but maybe, like his uncomprehending narrator Tony Webster, I just didn’t get it, and a second reading will help. Also my comment that there was no great literature on the shortlist may have been too glib.

Chair of the judges, Dame Stella Rimington, said that "The Sense of an Ending has the markings of a classic of English Literature. It is exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading." Gaby Wood, also one of this year's judges, points out that "the title is taken from a seminal piece of literary criticism written in 1965 by the great Frank Kermode, who died last year (and who, incidentally, was a judge of the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969)".

Dame Stella also provided one of the quotes of the year in reponse to some unkind and unecessary barbs: "People weirder than me have chaired the Booker," she said, "A previous chair was Michael Portillo."

Past the buffet

2011-09-09T14:31:00.002+01:00

The task for the judges of the Man Booker Prize is to find "the best book of the year" - but what does 'the best' mean, literally? Well, it seems clear that this year's judges were on a mission...

"People said to me when they heard I was in the judging panel, 'I hope you pick something readable this year' [...] That for me was such a big factor, it had to zip along."

That was Chris Mullin's mission statement. It reminds me of the old Woody Allen joke: "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."

On the announcement of the shortlist, the chair of the judges Dame Stella Rimington said: "We were looking for enjoyable books. I think they are very readable books" and previously, when the longlist was announced, she said it contained "books people would read and enjoy reading."

Yes, but what sort of people? Judging by the leaning towards political themes and the lack of humour, perhaps the sort that listen to Radio 4 all day, only switching it off for half an hour when a comedy show is broadcast.

In Ali Smith's There but for the a character on a train surveys what his fellow passengers are reading:

"A girl reading Women in Love. A Man reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - still (!!). A woman reading Death in Venice. A woman reading Heat and Dust. A man reading The White Hotel. A young man, very good looking, reading a novelization of Chariots of Fire. A girl, looks like a student, reading Slaughterhouse 5. Now he's past the buffet, now he's through first class, where nobody is reading anything but the Daily Telegraph (!)."

If Ali Smith will forgive me for concocting a new euphemism from her words, I suspect some of this year's judges are past the buffet. They didn't want books that would sit unfinished on the shelf, so they have chosen books that will be left behind on the train instead. Maybe some of them don't see any real value in novels unless they are based on real events. Maybe to them fiction is just story-telling and therefore unimportant compared to the news in their broadsheets. Maybe the snobby elitists who think otherwise needed taking down a peg or two. Maybe I'm being unfair, but then maybe they have been unfair to some excellent novelists by implying that their books are less good than some quite ordinary ones by mere rookies.

Snowdrops, for example, is a perfectly good debut novel, but why on earth it is in the running for a literary prize? It is the sort of book one might buy in WH Smith. That said, it does zip along and it involves Russia. As Kevin from Canada says "you can only conclude that this was a jury whose members simply don’t read very much."

I do quite like all of the shortlisted books, but there is no great literature there, and better books have been ignored. I don't think there is any criteria by which Half Blood Blues isn't bettered by Chinaman, for example. Also, since one thing that several of the jury's preferred books have in common is the theme of being betrayed - either by people or by one's own memory - I imagine that, years from now, each of the judges will blame the others for the inexplicable absence of At Last by Edward St Aubyn.

They have achieved their objective though, it is a very readable, book club friendly, list - to the disgust of many Booker aficionados. It is a nice list. Such a nice list that I'm surprised only one of them (Jamrach's Menagerie) has been chosen for Richard and Judy's book club. Maybe the others weren't good enough.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a bit of accessibility. I'm no elitist. I went to a comprehensive school, the name of which I still have trouble spelling. I dislike authors writing purple prose full of highfaluting references aimed above the heads of the vulgar rabble, and I like a good plot as much as the next man. (Unless, that is, the next man is Lee Monks who called the shortlist "a deplorably story-driven selection.") And, yes, I'm perfectly well aware of how snobby some of the things I've said here sound, but if you didn't laugh at the WH Smith line then, like the shortlist, you are short on humour. However, we do have a right, and are right, to expect something more challenging from the Booker Prize, something more original.

Yes, ideally the books chosen should be 'readable' by the average reader, but that does not mean anything difficult should be tossed aside. Nor should books be passed over for other, non-literary, reasons - such as personal feuds, or prejudice. Sadly that is not always the case.

In a barely coded attack on one particular judge in The Guardian, Paul Bailey has pointed out that as well as Alan Hollinghurst's omission from the shortlist, accomplished novels by other gay writers were also absent. He mentions Ali Smith (There but for the) and Philip Hensher (King of the Badgers), others will point to Adam Mars-Jones (Cedilla) and Paul Bailey himself (Chapman's Odyssey is still my favourite book of the year). Obviously, an author's sexuality should be totally irrelevant, but there are suspicions floating around that at least one judge has previously had 'issues' in that respect. Although I suspect that the "bossyboots" judge he alludes to is unlikely to be concerned by Bailey's broadside because, after all, it is in The Guardian, and why would anyone ever take any notice of The Guardian on anything whatsoever?

So what will they choose as their winner? Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the Man Booker Prize, has said that "a third reading in the space of months is tough on any novel, particularly those that are plot driven. When from the first reading you learn the denouement it becomes essential at subsequent readings that other ingredients come into play: the quality of writing, of dialogue, of characterisation."

I wish the judges the best of luck with that.

Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2011

2011-09-06T12:22:00.002+01:00

The shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize has been announced:

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
(Jonathan Cape - Random House)

Carol Birch - Jamrach's Menagerie
(Canongate Books)

Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers
(Granta)

Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues
(Serpent’s Tail)

Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English
(Bloomsbury)

A.D. Miller - Snowdrops
(Atlantic)

It is one of the most accessible shortlists ever, with all six books likely to prove popular with reading groups. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced at London's Guildhall on Tuesday 18th October.

The good, the bad, and the dead wood

2011-08-02T16:35:00.000+01:00

On reflection, I thought I ought to write a more positive post about the longlist. I mean, why was the reaction to this year's Man Booker longlist so negative? There is nothing wrong with the big-hitters at the 'top end' of the list: Barnes, Barry and Hollinghurst. Nor is Jamrach's Menagerie out of place - that's a terrific yarn with a tiger and a shipwrecked boy whose companions eat each other - what could be more Bookery than that? The 'minnows' at the bottom - Jane Rogers, Patrick McGuinness and Yvette Edwards (no relation) - are welcome too. Being introduced to interesting books from small publishers and new or neglected authors is a valuable part of the Man Booker prize.

That was the plan anyway, but then in the middle of one of the books, I just got angry. In no way, I thought to myself, is this as good as Chinaman. Did Shehan Karunatilaka make a mistake by writing a book set in the Sri Lanka he knows rather than being the eighty-seven-millionth writer to imagine what life was like under Nazism or Communism? I'm so tired of books that use those eras as handy, off-the-peg, dramatic backdrops for their stories.

"Not the best Halocaust book I've read" (sic) was how one reader's review of Far To Go began, and the blurb: "When Czechoslovakia relinquishes the Sudetenland to Hitler..." just made me groan. There are Nazis in the background of Half Blood Blues as well, while Snowdrops is set in Moscow.

In future I would like to see no more than one politico on the judging panel.

As David Sexton pointed out in the Evening Standard, the choice of judges always makes the Booker "a bit of a toss-up". Or indeed a punch-up. Inevitably, the literary human centipede continues to grow ever more legs as Philip Hensher, whose latest novel King of the Badgers didn't make the longlist, this week took a sideswipe at the "atrociously bad" "faltering" thrillers written by Dame Stella Rimington, who is chairing the judges this year.

He also pointed out that four of the five judges have written thrillers, and about a third of the longlist could be considered thrillers. (Although only if by 'thriller' you mean 'has a plot' and takes place against a background of mild jeopardy.) The thrust of his complaint being that, like flying ants, thrillers seem to be everybloodywhere you look nowadays. He also took up the cause of science fiction. "The liveliness and extravagance of current genre writing in fantasy and science fiction, such as China Miéville’s remarkable novels," he said, "make the field a much more plausible candidate for literary exaltation than the rule-bound thriller."

Yes, but doesn't China Miéville’s reputation rest on his earlier novels rather than his more recent output? From what I've read of Embassytown so far, it doesn't seem any more remarkable than, say, most of Iain M. Banks 'Culture' novels.

Anyway, on the new-weird front, the judges may have found some gold in them there hills. According to one review, The Sisters Brothers "contains perhaps literature’s funniest overweight narrator on horseback," which suggests Eli Sisters could be another Ignatius J Reilly - or (dare I say it?) another Vernon God Little. Could a Western win the Booker? Over one judge's goddamn dead body I suspect. (Pistols at dawn, eh, Susan? Nice clue!)

The judges will announce the shortlist on September 6th, and choose their winner on October 18th, well after high noon.

As is now traditional, the Guardian are giving everyone that isn't happy with the Man Booker longlist the chance to be unhappy all over again with their Not The Booker Prize. I nominated Chapman's Odyssey, and I hope I won't be the only one to vote for it, but I fear the rule changes this year will merely play into the hands of those authors with an ebullient online fanbase.

Finally you might like to know that BBC Radio 4 are serialising Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending next week. It's the fourth of the longlisted titles to be broadcast so far this year - following Snowdrops, Pigeon English and Half Blood Blues - making Book at Bedtime the best predictor of this year's longlist. Not that I am suggesting any of the judges may have listened to some of these books on the iPlayer rather than reading them. Who could even think such a thing?

2011 Man Booker Prize Longlist

2011-07-26T16:33:00.001+01:00

The longlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize has been announced, and I'm glad I didn't make any predictions. I had a dream last night that the judges chose a list full of completely unknown authors and, as it turns out, my subconscious wasn't far wrong.

These are the 13 titles in the running for the £50,000 prize:

Julian Barnes
The Sense of an Ending
(Jonathan Cape - Random House)

Sebastian Barry
On Canaan's Side
(Faber)

Carol Birch
Jamrach's Menagerie
(Canongate Books)

Patrick deWitt
The Sisters Brothers
(Granta)

Esi Edugyan
Half Blood Blues
(Serpent's Tail - Profile)

Yvvette Edwards
A Cupboard Full of Coats
(Oneworld)

Alan Hollinghurst
The Stranger's Child
(Picador - Pan Macmillan)

Stephen Kelman
Pigeon English
(Bloomsbury)

Patrick McGuinness
The Last Hundred Days
(Seren Books)

A.D. Miller
Snowdrops
(Atlantic)

Alison Pick
Far to Go
(Headline Review)

Jane Rogers
The Testament of Jessie Lamb
(Sandstone Press)

D.J. Taylor
Derby Day
(Chatto & Windus - Random House)

This year's judges are chaired by Dame Stella Rimington,
former Director-General of MI5 and writer of spy thrillers.
Her co-judges are the politician and author Chris Mullin;
the writer and journalist Matthew d'Ancona;
Daily Telegraph's Head of Books Gaby Wood
and author Susan Hill who, bravely, is on Twitter (@susanhillwriter).

I'm gobsmacked at the omission of Aravind Adiga and Edward St Aubyn, and I will never forgive you for leaving Paul Bailey off the list, Susan!

Pistols at dawn?

2011-07-25T16:17:00.005+01:00

The judges will be getting together on Tuesday to hammer out their longlist for this year's prize, so what will this year's Man Booker menagerie include? A cruel bird? A binary dog? Jive cats? Mr. Fox? A rabbit called God? The king of the badgers? Or even the last werewolf? Well, maybe a couple of those, but what else?

As I tweeted a few days ago, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Paul Bailey's lovely book Chapman's Odyssey, and I take heart from Susan Hill's "no comment".

Susan has also reported that one particular book has caused a rift between a couple of the judges which may result in "pistols at dawn". I hope it is included - a book that gets people agitated can't be bad...well, it could be bad, but it can't be boring - unlike some of those doorstep historical novels juries often feel obliged to include.

Some of those long - but not necessarily boring (especially if you like that sort of thing) - historical novels that may well be in the running this year include Andrew Miller's Pure, Gillespie and I by Jane Harris and Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke.

There are also heavyweight historical tomes from previous Booker winners Barry Unsworth (The Quality of Mercy is a sequel to Sacred Hunger) and Alan Hollinghurst (The Stranger's Child). There's been a small bandwagon rolling behind The Stranger's Child recently, but the same was true of David Mitchell last year, and the wheel fell off that one.

In total there are six previous winners of the prize with novels out this year. The other four being Aravind Adiga (Last Man in Tower), Anne Enright (The Forgotten Waltz), Michael Ondaatje (The Cat's Table) and Graham Swift (Wish You Were Here).

I had a real love-hate reaction to Wish You Were Here. You can read my review - in which I felt it necessary to use the word 'griefful' - here. Suffice it to say that, although it is a very powerful novel, it must not win. It might put people off reading literary fiction forevermore. One reviewer on Amazon said that Swift "writes unerringly" - yes, he does: as unerring as a steamroller slowly - oh, sooooo slowly - crushing your will to live.

Going back to Alan Hollinghurst, I will be happy to see him on the longlist, but I would be really delighted to see James Hollingshurst on the list. James Hollingshurst being the main character in David Nobbs' new novel It Had to Be You. It's unlikely that Booker Prize judges have ever had Nobbs on the table in front of them, but there's always a first time.

Certainly, the way the world is at the moment, we could all do with cheering up, and two of the best novels I've read so far this year are also laugh out loud funny: Shehan Karunatilaka's contender for the title of Great Sri Lankan Novel: Chinaman, and the bone-dry cynical wit of Edward St Aubyn's At Last, which (whisper it) is my tip for the prize.

But what about the annual argument about Booker judges ignoring genre fiction?

Wittgenstein said that "to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life". I know this because I read it somewhere in relation to Embassytown, the latest cosmic display of linguistic pyrotechnics by China Miéville, the omission of which - assuming the judges fail their Stadt Dyadic Empathy Test by leaving it off the longlist - will provoke the inevitable fury of SF lovers on the immer and in the out. (No, I'm not going to try to explain that, I'm not an SF writer.)

And what of crime-readers: are they to be disappointed as usual? "The literary writers are seeing lots of people reading us and relatively few people reading them, and they're cross about it," said Lee Child, winner of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award last week. Well, maybe not. Considering the literary output of some of this year's judges, it is reasonable to suspect that there may be a thriller or two on the list. Two contenders stand out: SJ Watson's Before I Go To Sleep and Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes. Indeed, the ratings for Elizabeth Haynes' debut novel are extraordinarily high.

There are always some unknown unknowns that slip through the net, books from smaller publishers that have gone unnoticed and unreviewed until the judges bring them to our attention. Nevertheless I have compiled a list of nearly two hundred novels from those mentioned on the discussion forum at the official Man Booker Prize website and various other websites and blogs. You can see it here.

Also, GoodReads members can vote for their favourites on this list: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9854

But remember the wise words of literary agent and novelist David Miller, whose book Today could also sneak onto the longlist: "A prize is not a way to judge a writer. It's a way of judging a jury."

Long Time, No Sit On Your Face

2011-06-17T01:54:00.005+01:00

Oh dear. Months without a blog post. Naughty, naughty. What have I missed? Let's see...

Beryl Bainbridge won the Man (How Patronising Is This) Booker Best of Beryl Prize for Master Georgie and Philip Roth won the International Man Booker Prize, prompting Carmen Calil to quit as a judge after being outvoted 2-1 by the blokes on the panel (Dr. Rick Gekoski and Justin Cartwright). Calil felt that Roth "goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe". I sort of agree (apart from the sitting on your face thing). Rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly, Roth is on my list of one-track-mind writers who only seem to write books about American-heterosexual-sex-obsessed-men-having-sex-and-mid-life-crises-and-more-sex. Then last year's winner Howard Jacobson weighed in against the Roth-denier (with whom he has some less-than-happy history) using more of his brilliant satirical wit than was apparent in The Finkler Question, and suggesting a Carmen Callil "Is He Sitting on Your Face" Prize!

Elsewhere, Margaret Atwood's Booker-winning novel The Blind Assassin became the first selection for an international book club on Twitter - a choice that wouldn't impress another Booker-winner, VS Naipaul, who recently announced that he considered no female writer to be his equal. This provoked another Booker-winner, Keri Hulme, to call Naipaul a "misogynist prick". "Many thousand women writers both outrank, and will out-survive, this slug," she said. Hulme herself hasn't published anything since winning the Booker in 1985 with The Bone People. She may still be waiting for us all to read it. Shame on us.

Sometimes though, when the judges and the winners queue up to shaft each other like this, I can't help seeing the Booker Prize as a human centipede of controversy.

Meanwhile, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht won the Orange Prize, offering the unlikely possibility of Tea winning the Orange and Coffee winning the Booker - should The Coffee Story by Peter Salmon triumph. I think that's unlikely, but I wouldn't bet against another feline winner. If we count Richard Parker in Life of Pi, tigers have won the Booker three times so far. This year's tiger features in Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch which I would love to see on the longlist next month. Here's one quick excerpt that made me laugh:

"Watney Street was all market. It smelled of rotten fruit and vegetables, strong fish, the two massive meat barrels that stood three doors down outside the butcher's, dismembered heads of pigs sticking snout upwards out of the tops. Nowhere near as bad as Bermondsey, which smelled of shit."

Which brings me to the important question round these parts: what are the contenders for this year's Man Booker Prize? The early favourites included yet another feline title: Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, which is due in August, along with Dermot Healy's first novel for over a decade, appropriately entitled Long Time, No See.

Personally, I will be very disappointed if the book I have most loved so far this year - Chapman's Odyssey by Paul Bailey - doesn't make the longlist, although I fear it may be too delicate to withstand the rough and tumble of the jury room - or me jinxing it.

I also loved Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman - a must read for any cricket lover. It's a very funny debut novel riffing on the whole history of cricket and Sri Lanka. It reminded me of Steve Toltz's debut A Fraction of the Whole, which was shortlisted in 2008. Its chances may hinge on whether the judges love or loathe the game. I'm not sure that a reader with no interest in cricket will appreciate the innumerable references to past cricketers both real and delusive.

Currently there seems to be a bandwagon rolling behind The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst's first novel since he won with The Line of Beauty seven years ago. There was a similar buzz around David Mitchell last year, of course.

Then there's another former winner, Graham Swift, who recently chose to promote his powerful new contemporary novel Wish You Were Here, by asserting that "there is no such thing as the contemporary novel" because of the time they take to write. I think that's just semantics. As far as I am concerned, if it's set within my lifetime it's contemporary.

A fair chance then that there will be a second-time winner this year - although Susan Hill, one of this year's judges, suggested on Twitter that she thought there ought to be a rule preventing authors from winning more than once. I disagree. The prize would be slowly devalued as, year by year, more writers became excluded. Imagine a year in which a number of previous winners publish excellent novels which are all ineligible - how would the judges' choice of "best book" look then?

Anyway, I have collated a pretty big list of possible contenders for this year's prize which you can peruse, and even vote for your favourites, here:

www.goodreads.com/list/show/9854

and I'm grateful to Susan for confirming on the Man Booker forum that about 65 titles on there are included on the list of more than 140 being read by the judges. A few more possible entries have been added since then, so it's about half-right. Of course Booker judges usually surprise us, so - despite Susan's comment on Twitter that the judges are "totally sick of reading bad novels" - I suspect that when they announce their longlist (on July 26th) they will have found a few more obscure gems to commend to us.

It may all be completely pointless though, since TV drama series have replaced novels "as the best way of widely communicating ideas and stories" according to Sir Salman Rushdie. From which you may well surmise (correctly) that he has written a television series, and that watching DVD Box sets now counts as research...

I spy with my little eye...

2010-11-25T15:39:00.000Z

The judges for the 2011 Man Booker Prize have been announced.

Dame Stella Rimington, former Director-General of MI5 and writer of spy thrillers, will be in the chair. Her co-judges will be the politician and author Chris Mullin; writer and journalist Matthew d'Ancona; author Susan Hill; and the Daily Telegraph's Head of Books Gaby Wood.

You might wonder whether Dame Stella is the first member of the security services to judge the prize. Obviously I could tell you, but then they might have to kill us...

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 18th October 2011 at London's Guildhall.

Finkler No Flunker

2010-10-13T02:18:00.006+01:00

Howard Jacobson has won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize 2010 for his novel 'The Finkler Question'.

He had never been shortlisted before, despite most of his previous ten novels being cited as possible Booker winners, and the announcement was clearly very popular with those in attendance at London's Guildhall.

Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, who chaired the judges, described The Finkler Question as "a marvellous book: very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize."

His fellow judges were Rosie Blau (literary editor of the Financial Times); dancer, writer and broadcaster Deborah Bull (Creative Director of ROH2 at the Royal Opera House); the biographer and critic Frances Wilson; and broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe (presenter of Round Britain Quiz).

In a typically funny acceptance speech Jacobson, after listing the many previous years in which his acceptance speeches went unused, said: "Tonight, I forgive everyone - they were only doing their job those judges, every one of whose names I could reel off."

I don't think I can forgive BBC News 24 for the way they abandoned his speech though. They just *had* to cut to "extraordinary scenes" of the President of Chile giving a speech about the impending rescue of the trapped Chilean miners. The rescue operation will only take about two days, and therefore couldn't possibly wait another five minutes. Sigh.

Ion Trewin, the literary director of the Man Booker Prizes, had described this year's shortlist as "the funniest in the history of the prize" although The Finkler Question isn't quite the first comic novel to win the prize, despite what everyone seems to think. Is DBC Pierre being airbrushed out of history now? Not to mention Kingsley Amis, Roddy Doyle and JG Farrell.

I'm delighted for Howard Jacobson, delighted that a comic novel has won a big award, and most of all delighted that a contemporary novel has won the Booker, which saves me a rant.

Howard Jacobson will be appearing at the Times Cheltenham Literary Festival on Saturday 16th, and speaking at the British Library on Thursday 21st October.

Shortlist secretly revealed in advance

2010-09-10T04:07:00.000+01:00

The day the Booker Prize shortlist was revealed traditionally involved hours of waiting while the judges wrangled and agonized their way to an agreement, but for the last three years the announcement has been surprisingly early. Then last Tuesday there was the faint whiff of rat in the air when Amazon seemed to pre-empt the announcement. Now we know why. Arifa Akbar in The Independent reveals that the judges picked the shortlist a week earlier for the benefit of booksellers. The authors were also informed. Apparently, this has been the case since 2008. This would be fair enough were it not for the potential for a bit of insider-dealing. How many people in the trade knew the shortlist in advance? Did the bookies know about this and were they still taking bets on books that were out of the running?

Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2010

2010-09-07T14:58:00.001+01:00

The shortlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize has been announced:

Peter Carey
Parrot and Olivier in America
(Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue
Room
(Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Damon Galgut
In a Strange Room
(Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson
The Finkler Question
(Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy
The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy
C
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)

All six authors will be reading from, and signing copies of, their shortlisted novels at London's Southbank Centre on Sunday 10 October. Five free pairs of tickets are on offer at the official Man Booker Prize website.

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on Tuesday 12th October.

Man Booker Prize 2010 - The Longlist

2010-07-27T17:24:00.003+01:00

Having read 138 books, the judges have spoken.
Here is their Man Booker Dozen for 2010:

Peter Carey
Parrot and Olivier in America
(Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue
Room
(Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen Dunmore
The Betrayal
(Penguin - Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut
In a Strange Room
(Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson
The Finkler Question
(Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy
The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy
C
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Zacob de Zoet
(Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

Lisa Moore
February
(Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray
Skippy Dies
(Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain
Trespass
(Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas
The Slap
(Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner
The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)

Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, chair of the judging panel, described them as "thirteen exceptional novels," saying they had chosen them "for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain."

The other judges are Rosie Blau, literary editor of the Financial Times; the dancer, writer and broadcaster Deborah Bull; the biographer and critic Frances Wilson; and broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe. They meet again to select the shortlist in six weeks time, on September 7th.

It's been a while since I cocked a snook at the bookies, but they really do ask for it. You would think that after last year, when Wolf Hall was heavily backed at 8/1 at this stage, they would have learned, but apparently not. William Hill made Andrea Levy the favourite, despite the fact that The Long Song didn't even make the shortlist for the Orange Prize earlier this year. Meanwhile, on Twitter (inevitably) Peter Florence was quick to point out that "David Mitchell at 9-2 is a smart bet." No kidding. I imagine it will be the odds-on favourite before they can say "ouch, stop biting our hands off."

Man Booker 2010 Speculation

2010-07-21T00:13:00.004+01:00

Half the year has gone already so it must be nearly time for the Man Booker Prize longlist. Let's take stock.

The main question, after historical novels had a virtual monopoly on last year's shortlist, is will this year's judges favour a broader range of titles?

The Guardian has suggested that The Truth by Peter Temple might be a contender, after he became the first crime novelist ever to win Australia's top literary prize - the Miles Franklin award, and they point to Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 being longlisted two years ago.

According to Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the Man Booker Prize, there are "no exclusions". His advice to the judges is that "if you consider a novel – whether it's crime, romance or science fiction – is really fabulous in every particular, then judge it with the same criteria you'd use for a literary novel, and if you agree, you must include it"

Another clear signal from the organisers that crime novels could be in the frame was the inclusion of Ruth Rendell and Reginald Hill on The Lost Booker longlist for 1970, and both of those authors have novels out this year (Tigerlily's Orchids and The Woodcutter respectively). Michael Collins' Midnight in a Perfect Life might also be under consideration - he was shortlisted in 2000 for The Keepers in Truth.

But if a 'crime' novel were to make the longlist my hunch would be Patricia Duncker's The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge in which a mass suicide on the eve of the Millennium leads a 'sect-hunter' to investigate the mysterious composer she suspects to be culpable, and who falls in love with her. Dense to the point of being overwritten, it is no mere page-turner.

I suspect it must be difficult for a prize jury to convince themselves that they should recommend something truly grievous to thousands of readers as being the best book of the year. (Although Booker juries do have form in this regard: The Sea and The Gathering spring unwelcomely to mind.) However, they have to choose from what is on offer, and as Orange prize judge Daisy Goodwin complained earlier this year: "there's a lot of grimness out there."

Take the blurb for Simon Lelic's debut novel Rupture, another outside contender for the longlist: "In the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into his school assembly and opens fire. He kills three pupils and a colleague before turning the gun on himself."

A grim subject does not necessarily make for a miserable book though. Blogger Scott Pack describes Ray Robinson's Forgetting Zoë as "disturbing, certainly, but very very beautiful." It tackles the subject of Stockholm Syndrome and has echoes of the Josef Fritzl case, as does Emma Donoghue's Room, which has created quite a strong literary buzz.

I wonder whether, up against so much misery, the humour of Ian McEwan's Solar might ...erm... shine, despite being not all that well received by the critics. Which leads me to look starwards and wonder whether, after the hoo-ha Kim Stanley Robinson provoked last year, publishers might have submitted a bit of speculative fiction for the judges consideration?

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts was the book Robinson maintained should have won last year, so will Roberts' latest - New Model Army - have been entered by Gollancz? Do genre imprints like Gollancz even submit books?

"It is no stretch at all to imagine New Model Army being taken very seriously indeed as a piece of literary dystopia, on a par with Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (it’s actually better) or the speculative work of Margaret Atwood" says, erm... bookgeek.

There are also several writers with Booker 'form' who have published 'speculative' fiction this year: Salvage, the latest novel from Robert Edric, who is highly regarded for his historical fiction (he was longlisted for Peacetime in 2002 and Gathering the Water in 2006) is an "Orwellian vision" set in Northern England a hundred years from now after climate change has wrought havoc, leaving large areas of the country flooded. Also set in the future (2024 to be exact) is All That Follows, the latest from Jim Crace - who was shortlisted (and, as I never miss the chance to say, should have won) in 1997 for Quarantine.

Then there is China Miéville - he of the 'New Weird' - who ought to have been on the radar last year for The City and The City (which won him his third Arthur C. Clarke award). His latest novel, Kraken, begins with the disappearance of a giant squid from the Natural History Museum - a plotline Iris Murdoch sadly neglected. It is a treat to read and therefore unlikely to be taken seriously by prize judges. (I think it's also probably safe to assume that the judges will be sticking to the Commonwealth here on Earth rather than venturing into Commonwealth space with Peter F. Hamilton's The Evolutionary Void.)

Something else that might be too weird for the Booker (although there can never be anything too weird in my opinion) is the fantastic imagination of Jasper Fforde. If the judges haven't been asked to consider Shades of Grey they have been deprived. Any book in which there is a black market for spoons has to be worth reading.

And what about young adult fiction? In 2001 the judges flirted with it when they longlisted The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials III). So how about the final part of Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy: Monsters of Men? It is hard to find a review that doesn't give it a five-star rating. I have only read the first part (The Knife of Never Letting Go) and that was one of the more emotionally draining reads of recent years, easily a match for Pullman. According to Daniel Hahn in The Independent "a 40-year-old lawyer was on the Tube when he reached a certain (now infamous) scene and had to grab a handrail to steady himself for fear of passing out."

In a debate on the official Man Booker forum I took a punt on Monsters of Men being the 'Thirteenth Book' on the longlist - that's the one that comes straight out of left field, as the Americans would say, the 'Me Cheeta' or 'Child 44'. Truth be told, I am hoping that that 'accolade' goes to Little Hands Clapping the latest novel by Dan Rhodes (accurately described as "reliably odd, but fabulous" by The Guardian) which is one of my favourite books of 2010.

Overall I am finding this to be a wonderful year for imaginative fiction (which ought to be a tautology, but all too often isn't) and that's even before I get my hands on a copy of Nicola Barker's Burley Cross Postbox Theft. Maybe some of these novels aren't 'literary' enough to get a kite mark from the Booker judges, but even so they have no excuse for presenting us with a list chop bang full of historical fiction.

That said, a couple of historical novels I would be happy to see on the list are The Clay Dreaming by Ed Hillyer (in which a member of the Aboriginal Australian cricket team investigates his ancestry while touring England in 1868) and Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer. (Does the 1970s count as history yet?)

What else? Well, The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare by Robert Winder sounds like just the sort of novel that prize juries find irresistible. In fact the temptation to include Shakespeare on the longlist will be doubly hard to resist because Mr Shakespeare himself has a new book out. (Inheritance, by Nicholas of that ilk.)

Some other possible contenders with an historical setting include: The Long Song by Andrea Levy; The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon; Into Suez by Stevie Davies; Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore by Stella Duffy (another candidate for the 'Thirteenth' place?) and The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore, which is set in the Soviet Union during the last days of Stalin - a milieu always guaranteed to impress literary prize judges.

This brings me back to the debate about 'faction' which rumbles on, and rightly so. In a discussion at the Hay Festival, Dunmore said she was "very wary" of putting words into the mouths of real characters; while the Coalition government's new curriculum guru Niall Ferguson said that he no longer reads historical fiction because it "contaminates historical understanding"; and military historian Antony Beevor suggested that historical novelists ought to mark in bold type the "bits they made up". Hear, hear!

Another problem I have with historical fiction is that it almost always deals with historical events (and people) with which (and with whom) I am unfamiliar (and uninterested). A case in point was According to Queeney by the blessed Beryl Bainbridge, who sadly left us recently, and another example this year is Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America which is based on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville.

Carey, along with Ian McEwan and Martin Amis will be amongst the bookies favourites on reputation alone, but David Mitchell is clearly the one to beat.

I feel bad being disappointed by what is clearly an excellent novel, with some rollicking dialogue, but I agree with what Trevor Berrett said on the Man Booker forum about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet:

"It's good storytelling, but it's really just storytelling. I wanted more. I have a hard time believing it can sustain three readings to win the prize."

I felt like that about AS Byatt's The Children's Book last year as well (and every Sarah Waters book for that matter). I want something more thought-provoking and preferably with a contemporary setting.

Pocket Notebook by Mike Thomas, for example, would add some bite to the longlist. The knowledge that the author is a serving police officer in real life makes his portrayal of the breakdown of an armed response officer quite alarming. Much, much nearer Irvine Welsh's Filth than Dixon of Dock Green, and another one of my books of the year. Trouble is, William Heinemann also publish Ray Robinson's Forgetting Zoë and Tim Pears' Landed - and they are only allowed to submit two. I have already stuck my neck out on twitter to say that Landed is a must for the shortlist. Reading it made me feel stupid for not having read any of Tim Pears' earlier books. Inventive and beautiful, it captivated me, surprised me and then broke my heart.

Another edgy contemporary novel I would be pleased to see on the longlist is Contact by Jonathan Buckley in which a fifty-something businessman sees his contented middle-class existence threatened by the appearance of an uncouth and menacing young man claiming to be his son. It is as unsettling as Ian McEwan used to be and, indeed, has strong echoes of Enduring Love - which, of course, was controversially overlooked that year. (Those darn 1997 judges again.) I've jinxed Jonathan Buckley before though, so maybe I should keep stumm.

Another writer I have jinxed before, and therefore hesitate to mention, is Gerard Woodward, whose new book Nourishment is out later in the year. I know nothing about it except that, according to the blurb, it begins "with an act of unintentional cannibalism". Can't wait.

The longlist will be announced on July 27th, the shortlist follows on September 7th, and the prize will be awarded on October 12th (all Tuesdays)

Troubles triumphs

2010-05-19T19:50:00.002+01:00

The 'Lost' Man Booker Prize for 1970 has been awarded to
J.G. Farrell for Troubles (Phoenix). Farrell's relentlessly amusing novel received 38% of votes cast by the public at the official Man Booker Prize website - more than twice as many as any of the other shortlisted titles.
He becomes the third person to win the prize twice - although, had Troubles had been recognized at the time, he would have become the first when he won with The Siege of Krishnapur in 1973.

'Lost' Man Booker Prize for 1970: The Shortlist

2010-03-25T20:34:00.007Z

Here is the shortlist for the 'Lost' Man Booker Prize for 1970, as revealed this afternoon at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival:

Nina Bawden - The Birds On The Trees (Virago)
J.G. Farrell - Troubles (Phoenix)
Shirley Hazzard - The Bay of Noon (Virago)
Mary Renault - Fire From Heaven (Arrow)
Muriel Spark - The Driver’s Seat (Penguin)
Patrick White - The Vivisector (Vintage)

The list was chosen by three judges who were all born around 1970:
ITN newsreader Katie Derham, the poet and novelist Tobias Hill and the journalist and critic Rachel Cooke.

Nina Bawden and Shirley Hazzard are the only authors on the list who are still alive, but according to the official site the books are all "still in print and generally available today". Nevertheless, as I have said before, that just shows they aren't reliant on libraries. If I said people were fighting over Nottinghamshire libraries' one and only copy of Troubles, I would only be slightly exaggerating, and three of the others aren't even listed in their catalogue.

I'm slightly disappointed that neither Paul Bailey or Francis King made the shortlist.

Paul Bailey received just £400 for Trespasses back in 1970, and last year he had to apply to the Royal Literary Fund for financial support because no-one was interested in publishing his latest novel Chapman's Odyssey, although it is now going to be published by Bloomsbury. It's good to know that some of the money they made from Harry Potter is being spread around.

As for Francis King, the story of A Domestic Animal's initial publication - or rather non-publication - is quite a tale. Available again now thanks to Faber Finds print on demand, it was initially withdrawn a few days before publication following an injunction, and threat of libel action, from the former Labour MP Tom Skeffington-Lodge who had spotted that a character called Dame Winifred Harcourt had been based on him. In his autobiography Yesterday Came Suddenly, Francis King recounts the nightmare he went through with admirable humour, but it explains why he has described A Domestic Animal as "the novel that comes nearest to saying what I wanted to say - and that cost me the most". It also formed the basis of a subsequent novel called The Action, which seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth - another one in need of 'finding' perhaps?

But back to the shortlist, I agree with Charlotte Higgins of the Guardian that it looks like a two-horse race now. Although the rule is: never make predictions - not only will they be wrong but when you look back at them you will question your own sanity. Despite that I will confidently predict a second win for JG Farrell. I had expected to find Troubles hard-going (after all it is a historical novel and they bore me) but it wore down my defences by being relentlessly amusing. And I'm not just saying that to jinx it, in the sneaky hope that Muriel Spark will win a richly deserved posthumous Booker instead. (Even though it would be for her weirdest novel.)

The Times will be hosting a live debate at midday tomorrow (Friday 26th March) asking who should win.

The winner will be announced on May 19th. To vote, go to: www.themanbookerprize.com/news/vote before April 23rd.

Revised 1970 longlist gives us more (Trespasses)

2010-03-05T02:54:00.007Z

You wait forty years for a 1970 Booker Prize longlist and then two come along a month apart. Sort of. The Lost Booker longlist has been revised: Joe Orton's Head To Toe has been removed from the list for being late - not because it was published posthumously but because it wasn't published until January 1971; and The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence has also been removed, having been published in 1969. Par for the course really when you consider that the Lost Booker Prize only came about when the official Booker archivist Peter Straus noticed that Fifth Business by Robertson Davies hadn't been shortlisted in 1971 despite being lauded by several of that year's judges, only for it to turn out to be ineligible for the Lost Booker Prize as well because it wasn't published until 1971. Or something. That one seems to have slipped through the net twice now.

On the plus side, in comes another author deserving of more recognition: Paul Bailey, for his second novel Trespasses, about which I know next-to-nothing but from that little it is clear that this is a book I would like to read given the chance, so I am looking forward to the reissue Bloomsbury have promised (although there is no sign of it as yet).

Dipping into the longlist has certainly been an eye opener for me. I didn't remember how totally obsessed by sex everyone was in 1970. Mind you, I was only four years old at the time. For example, the original hardback copy of A Fairly Honourable Defeat the library dug out of their archives for me has a drawing of a naked woman on the cover. I don't think I can resist sending a mischievous tweet to BBC2's Review Show suggesting they cover the prize by getting their guests to review 1970 editions of the titles. I'm guessing Germaine Greer wouldn't be impressed. Meanwhile, the protagonist of The Hand Reared Boy recalls being tossed-off by his brother, his sister, the maid, and all the other boys in the dormitory of his public school (of course). I confidently predict it will not win the 'Lost' Man Booker Prize - not unless they want the award to be rechristened the Boy Wanker Prize. Sigmund Freud would have a field day; as he might with Martin Amis, according to Anna Ford in The Sunday Times recently: “I really don’t think he is able to relate to people properly or understands their feelings," she said. "I always found that Martin, when he was talking to me, looked straight through me. He simply wasn’t interested. I think that applies to other women, too.” Although he has rebutted some of the details in a quickfire response, I suspect she is right. For me, his novels - the few I've read, that is - seem to be suffused with that emotionally disengaged tone common amongst clever-clever public schoolboys* - the sort who smirk. A trait pinpointed by a young man on the Channel 4 documentary Tower Block of Commons recently, when asked what he thought of David Cameron. The first bullseye in the General Election class war? [*public school: "where they make twats" - Coming of Age, BBC3, last week...or was it Russell Howard on Mock the Week?]

By a synchronicitous happenstance, Amis's latest book The Pregnant Widow is set in 1970, potentially linking both the Lost Booker with this year's Man Booker prizes - unless he is snubbed by the judges for the umpteenth time, of course. Surprisingly there may be a clear favourite for this year's prize already. It's stupidly early to stick one's neck out, especially with books on the way from Ian McEwan and David Mitchell in particular, but Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor is starting to create a real buzz. Jon will be reading from, and talking about, Even the Dogs, at (amongst other places) West Bridgford library on Thursday 11th March at 2:30pm, and I hope to be there, lurking in the background.

He has also been interviewed by dovegreyreader for her excellent blog, although I was disappointed to read this comment: "I still think Jonathan Buckley's "So He Takes The Dog" is one of the great British novels of the last decade, and I still seem to be alone in that" - which proves that he has never read this blog. But then, to quote Joseph Heller, who has?

At long last...the1970 long list!

2010-02-01T00:34:00.016Z

The race is on for the 1970 Booker Prize. No, that's not a misprint, I do mean 1970. It seems that in the formative years of the prize they missed one. The first two prizes were awarded for the best novel published in the previous year, which covered 1968 and 1969, but from 1971 it was awarded to the best novel of that year, neglecting those novels that were published in 1970. So now the search is on for the Lost Man Booker Prize winner, and a 22-strong longlist has been announced:

Brian Aldiss - The Hand Reared Boy
HE Bates - A Little Of What You Fancy?
Nina Bawden - The Birds On The Trees
Melvyn Bragg - A Place In England
Christy Brown - Down All The Days
Len Deighton - Bomber
JG Farrell - Troubles
Elaine Feinstein - The Circle
Shirley Hazzard - The Bay Of Noon
Reginald Hill - A Clubbable Woman
Susan Hill - I'm The King Of The Castle
Francis King - A Domestic Animal
Margaret Laurence - The Fire Dwellers
David Lodge - Out Of The Shelter
Iris Murdoch - A Fairly Honourable Defeat
Shiva Naipaul - Fireflies
Patrick O'Brian - Master and Commander
Joe Orton - Head To Toe
Mary Renault - Fire From Heaven
Ruth Rendell - A Guilty Thing Surprised
Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
Patrick White - The Vivisector

The shortlist, to be chosen by journalist and critic Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader Katie Derham and the poet and novelist Tobias Hill, will be announced in March. There will then be a public vote on the official Man Booker Prize website with the winner to be revealed in May.

It's a fascinating and varied looking longlist which, as well as visiting the usual corners of the Commonwealth during days and wars gone by, also features Pop Larkin & family, Dalziel & Pascoe, Inspector Wexford, Alexander the Great, masturbation and giant buttocks. Fantastic!

I have only read two of the books (although, by happy coincidence, I bought a copy of Susan Hill's book for 30p on Saturday) and I have to confess that two-thirds of the titles and two of the authors (Elaine Feinstein and Margaret Laurence) are completely new to me.

The organisers do suggest that all these books are readily available, but that tells me they haven't tried to obtain a forty-year old literary novel from a library recently. I would certainly like to get my hands on copies of the books by Brian Aldiss, Francis King and Joe Orton, which may suggest that my literary taste comes at least in part from entirely the wrong bodily organ.

Bearing that in mind it won't come as a surprise that one of the books I have read is Fire From Heaven and, as if to prove the enduring popularity of Mary Renault's Alexander Trilogy, the copy I borrowed from a library was stubbornly unrenewable due to demand. Not bad for book that is of an age greater than its world-conquering subject ever attained. To paraphrase Sid Waddell, when Alexander the Great was thirty-three he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer; Renault's book is forty, and still going strong. Bookies take heed.

Also, being a fan of Muriel Spark, I had read The Driver's Seat - or, to be more precise, I hurriedly bulldozed my way through it in a library once. I expected a short book by one of my favourite authors to be a breeze but it just left me cold. I think it's the only one of Muriel Spark's books I haven't enjoyed.

There are a number of suspiciously popular authors for a Booker list, so it will be interesting to see whether either of the detective novels or the phenomenally successful Master and Commander make the shortlist, and also whether Iris Murdoch has become irredeemably passé. Back in 1970 she would have been a certainty for the shortlist, although I have a hunch that JG Farrell or Nina Bawden would have won. (Sorry, is that two hunches?)

I'm not so sure what judges of the time would have made of A Domestic Animal though. Francis King may not have been as in-your-face queer as Joe Orton, but he was still ahead of his time. An unsung pioneer in the still-too-small world of gay literary fiction. Remember, this was a year before Maurice by EM Forster was published posthumously, and almost a quarter-of-a-century before Alan Hollinghurst was first shortlisted. I hope that the 2010 judges bear that in mind.

So I am hoping (arrogantly expecting, to be honest) to see a tremendously strong shortlist comprising: Nina Bawden, Len Deighton, JG Farrell, Susan Hill, Francis King and Mary Renault.

2010: A Booker Odyssey

2010-01-12T21:18:00.007Z

Yawn.

Something must have put me to sleep for several months, I wonder what it was? Anyway, as I look out on the snowy landscape outside, I think I should quickly get back to hibernation; but it is a new year, so before I do, let's have a stupidly early look at the early runners and riders for this year's prize.

As always there are a clutch of 'usual suspects', most notably the headline-grabbers Martin Amis (The Pregnant Widow) and Ian McEwan (Solar), and twice-winner Peter Carey (Parrot and Olivier in America).

David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet would also be vying for the top of my list of most eagerly awaited novels of 2010, along with Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, and Nicola Barker's Burley Cross Postbox Theft - her first novel since Darkmans, which should have won in 2007 (and I was delighted to see so many people agreeing about that during the Books of the Decade discussion on The Guardian's website).

I'm also going to be my usual biased self and tip Even the Dogs, by fellow Nottingham inhabitant Jon McGregor for this year's shortlist. I suspect his poetic style may well find favour with this year's judging panel, chaired as it is by Andrew Motion - the only man to survive being Poet Laureate.

His cohorts on the judging panel include three women: Rosie Blau (literary editor of the Financial Times); dancer, writer and broadcaster Deborah Bull (Creative Director of ROH2 at the Royal Opera House); and the biographer and critic Frances Wilson. They are joined by broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe (presenter of some excellent BBC Radio Four programmes including A Good Read and Round Britain Quiz). I imagine the five of them will soon be woken by the sound of books thudding onto their doormats.

It's back to sleep for me now though - unless, that is, publishers want to wake me with the thudding sound of review copies landing on my doormat as well. After all, there's always a first time, isn't there?
Although I may be using the word 'always' wrongly.

[Hits snooze button]

Wolf follows Tiger

2009-10-06T21:16:00.013+01:00

Hilary Mantel has won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, her novel about the life of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII.

"At this moment I am happily flying through the air," Mantel said in her acceptance speech, referring to Peter Carey's comment that winning the Booker prize was like being in a train crash. Luckily there is a £50,000 prize cheque to cushion her return to earth.

The judges were: John Mullan (Professor of English at University College, London), Lucasta Miller (biographer and critic), Michael Prodger (literary editor of The Sunday Telegraph), comedian Sue Perkins, and, in the chair, BBC broadcaster James Naughtie, who said that Hilary Mantel had "given us a thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century," with "a vast narrative sweep that gleams on every page with luminous and mesmerising detail."

I have to confess that, from a very young age, history always bored the bejeezus out of me, so I find historical fiction a real chore to read, but I will give Wolf Hall a chance; and while I share the unease expressed by AS Byatt over the use of real historical figures as characters in 'faction', I suppose it is part of our heritage - whether it be I, Claudius or a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

Meanwhile, Rana Dasgupta's Solo won the shadowy 'not-the-booker-prize' in the Guardian which, as well as being rife with allegations of vote-rigging, suffered from the stumbling block that most of us ordinary folk haven't had the chance to read many of the books yet. Maybe not-the-booker-prize could be "run five or 10 years retrospectively" as Jenny Colgan suggested of the real thing itself in The Independent recently, in possibly the best article on the Man Booker Prize I've ever read (that's code for 'OMG an article by someone who likes and dislikes the same books as me!')

The Stories of Never Letting Go

2009-09-23T00:22:00.009+01:00

'Kim Stanley Robinson' really ought to be an anagram of 'kat among the pigeons' because he has rustled a few feathers this week with his article entitled Science fiction: The stories of now in The New Statesman...

"Oh, I know there is a Booker prize," he says, "I've heard of it even in California - supposedly given to the best fiction published in the Commonwealth every year - but [...] they judge in ignorance and give their awards to what usually turn out to be historical novels."

"...you need the literature of your time. You can't get the meaning of our life in 2009 from historical fiction, nor from science alone. Novels serve us, and are treasured, because we want meaning, and fiction is where meaning is created."

Mr. Nail meet Mr. Hammerhead.

More contentiously he suggests that "three or four of the last 10 Booker prizes should have gone to science fiction novels the juries hadn't read."

And he names names: claiming that Air by Geoff Ryman should have won in 2005, when the prize went to The Sea by John Banville; Life by Gwyneth Jones rather than The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst the year before, and Signs of Life by M. John Harrison instead of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy in 1997.

I haven't read any of those three science fiction novels, but I have read the three prizewinners and I would be reluctant to go out to bat for any of them. Indeed, I would have given the 1997 prize to Quarantine by Jim Crace and the 2004 prize to Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I would be even less inclined to defend The Gathering or The White Tiger as being the best novels of the last two years, and I'm quite surprised he couldn't find any science fiction novels to prefer for those years as well.

As for this year, he says that the prize "should probably go to a science fiction comedy called Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts." Although, ironically, Yellow Blue Tibia is set in the Soviet Union in 1946 and 1986, and Adam Roberts is a Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature in the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London.

In response, John Mullan, the academic judge on this year's panel (and a Professor of English at University College, London) said: "Science fiction can go and fuck itself." No, not really, but - given that the Booker Prize has traditionally thrived on controversy - he might as well have. What he actually said was that he was "not aware of science fiction," calling it a "self-enclosed world" now kept "in a special room in book shops, bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other." I'm surprised he didn't mention the beep-beep noises. Or capes.

It's true that science fiction has been ghettoized - as have various other genres (a pain when you are trying to find a transgenre book and have to search several different places in the library or bookshop) but that is just a sign of popularity. Bookshops have no Booker Prize section - indeed some old winners aren't even stocked at all - because there is no demand; no public interest. On a recent edition of the BBC2 quiz show Pointless, contestants were challenged to name a Man Booker Prize winning author. One of the contestants managed to pull the name Naipaul from the vaguest depths of his memory and thereby won the jackpot because none of the hundred people surveyed had named Naipaul, thus making him one of the winning 'pointless' answers. He wasn't the only one. Other winners who registered nul points in the public memory included: Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, Arundhati Roy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, AS Byatt and (read it and weep) twice-winner, and possibly soon-to-be three-time winner: JM Coetzee. That's right, none of the hundred people asked connected his, or any of those other illustrious names, with the Booker Prize.

Maybe there should be a Meta-Fiction Prize where the winners of all these best book of the year prizes are pitted against each other: The Booker, The Orange, The Whitbread, The IMPAC plus genre prizes like the Gold Dagger, Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo awards etc. to guarantee some diversity in the mix. Perhaps with Richard & Judy chairing the judges, although it might have to be over the dead bodies of academics like John Mullan.

Oh, and let's not forget prizes for literature aimed at young people - like the Carnegie Medal and Booktrust Teenage Prize - because, as Patrick Ness said recently: "Teenage writing is the place to be writing these days ... It's where the exciting writing is going on and there's no snobbery about genre."

And, having read his 2008 Booktrust Prize winning novel The Knife of Never Letting Go, I wouldn't want to argue with him - he might be capable of anything.

When do they think we are?

2009-09-08T13:50:00.004+01:00

The shortlist for the 2009 Man Booker Prize was announced this morning. (Morning?! Did they shit the bed? Or did they already know what the shortlist was going to be?) Anyway, the six books in the running are:

A.S. Byatt - The Children's Book (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

J.M. Coetzee - Summertime (Random House - Harvill Secker)

Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (Harper Collins - Fourth Estate)

Simon Mawer - The Glass Room (Little, Brown)

Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger (Little, Brown - Virago)

These judges obviously love historical fiction. I know great contemporary fiction is hard to find, but that's ridiculous. Sorry, I'm just a bit aghast at the thought of trying to wade through the three books I least wanted to see on the list, the three that are also very difficult to get hold of at any of Nottinghamshire's public libraries - not because they don't have any copies but because they are in such demand...from old biddies probably.

Ian Rankin was bemoaning the exclusion of genre fiction from the Booker on last week's Newsnight Review, and normally I wouldn't agree - I think the prize should be for non-genre literary fiction - but the prevalence of historical fiction does make a mockery of the neglect of science fiction or crime novels which attempt to tell us something about our world today and tomorrow, instead of remastering the past. I blame Who Do You Think You Are?

The winner will be announced on October 6th.

Wolf or Chimp to follow Tiger?

2009-09-07T23:02:00.011+01:00

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize is announced tomorrow, and we will find out whether Cheeta the Chimpanzee still has a chance of succeeding The White Tiger. Predicting a shortlist of six out of thirteen feels like it should be easy, but it never is - and these judges have already proved that they are not above of a bit of monkey business. However, if I were going to be stupid enough to try and second guess what the judges will select for their shortlist, my wrong guess would be something like:

Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall

Simon Mawer - The Glass Room

Colm Toibin - Brooklyn

William Trevor - Love and Summer

Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

Obviously JM Coetzee is also a strong contender but, surprisingly, he has only been shortlisted twice - although he did win both times, so it would be ominous for the others if he does make the cut. Summertime is the third of his pseudoautobiographical novels, the first of which - Boyhood - introduced me to the power of his writing. It had a visceral effect on me - if I had ever seen a psychoanalyst I fear I would have angrily accused him of selling my innermost childhood thoughts to Coetzee, it resonated so loudly with my own feelings as a boy. Youth on the other hand made no impression on me at all.

It is a curious fact that seven of the last ten Booker Prizes have gone to the shortlisted author whose name came first alphabetically, which bodes well for AS Byatt, although I can't believe The Children's Book will survive re-reading. A number of people, including myself, have found it very easy to put down - on the basis that life is too short for all that 'extraneous detail'. Reading The Children's Book you could be forgiven for thinking that the Twentieth Century never happened. Surely at least one of the judges will refuse point blank to read it twice, let alone three times!

That said, I applaud Lady Byatt (what? not yet?) for her attack on writers of "faction" - "mixtures of biography and fiction, journalism and invention."

"I don't like the idea of going into the mind of the real unknown dead", she said, "It feels like the appropriation of others' lives and privacy. Making other people up, which is a kind of attack on them."

I agree: it doesn't seem ethical.

It's a complaint that could be applied to two of her rivals for the prize: The Quickening Maze, and Wolf Hall - which had the bookies on the run after fans heavily backed Hilary Mantel at double-figure odds. They stand to lose a six-figure sum if it wins. Serves them right for offering stupidly long odds in the first place on a book which has had nothing but praise, by an author who deserves wider recognition. The same applies to Simon Mawer - The Glass Room is far too good to be thought of as an outsider for the prize and could easily win, yet William Hill are offering 16/1!

The two Irishmen on the longlist would also be popular winners, neither having won before despite numerous nominations (Colm Toibin in 1999 and 2004, and 81-year-old William Trevor in 1970, 1976, 1991 and 2002.) Love and Summer is currently being serialized on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime (as was Brooklyn earlier in the year).

Meanwhile, the inclusion of Me Cheeta on the longlist sparked off a raft of puns like 'Cheeta writer could be top banana' and 'Heavyweights crash chimp's Booker tea-party' - but surely the cheeky monkeys won't dare shortlist it, will they?

Hodd Robbed!

2009-07-28T18:13:00.010+01:00

The 2009 Man Booker Prize longlist - or perhaps this year, since Sue Perkins is on the judging panel, it should be renamed the supersizelist - has been announced, it is:

A.S. Byatt - The Children's Book (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
J.M. Coetzee - Summertime (Random House - Harvill Secker)
Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man (Faber and Faber)
Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
James Lever - Me Cheeta (Harper Collins - Fourth Estate)
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (Harper Collins - Fourth Estate)
Simon Mawer - The Glass Room (Little, Brown)
Ed O'Loughlin - Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Penguin - Ireland)
James Scudamore - Heliopolis (Random House - Harvill Secker)
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn (Penguin - Viking)
William Trevor - Love and Summer (Penguin - Viking)
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger (Little, Brown - Virago)

So, no place for Hodd. I hope the judges don't venture into Sherwood Forest any time soon! Indeed, it was probably not even among the 132 books they read (unless it was one of the eleven they called in) as Jonathan Cape obviously submitted The Quickening Maze and The Wilderness instead. To be fair, there were bound to be some tough choices in a year quite rightly described by BBC Radio 4's James Naughtie, who is chairing the judges this year, as exceptional. He also described the longlist as one of the strongest in recent memory. Certainly any year where a new Margaret Atwood novel doesn't make the longlist must be strong. The biggest surprise on the list has to be Me Cheeta - a fictional autobiography of Hollywood's most famous chimp - which is being mistakenly shelved among real showbiz autobiographies in libraries.

To celebrate the longlist announcement, the 2009 Man Booker Prize will be showcased as part of the One & Other project on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. On Tuesday 11 August at 11am, a Man Booker Prize enthusiast will give readings from all 13 longlisted titles and then give away copies of the books. Please don't throw bananas when he reads from Me Cheeta. Ahhhhhhuhahuhahuhahhhhhh!

The shortlist will be announced on September 8th (for the benefit of the superstitious, that's the day before 9/9/9) and the winner on October 6th.

Sadly, Nottingham was also robbed of one of its finest literary talents on Saturday when Stanley Middleton died at the age of 89. Stanley was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1974 for Holiday.

Annual Man Booker fog-knitting competition

2009-07-27T01:03:00.008+01:00

The Man Booker Prize longlist will be announced on Tuesday, so it's crystal ball time again.

Predicting which novels the judges will select for their longlist is like trying to nail jelly to a wall, not least because those of us on the outside looking in never even know which books have been entered for the prize. After all, it wouldn't do for authors to find out that their publisher had chosen someone else ahead of them. Ego juggling is best done in private.

Even assessing the eligibility of an author can be tricky. I had a moment of doubt about Adam Thorpe recently when I found out that he was born in Paris and resides in France - especially when I realised, with some surprise, that he has never even been longlisted before. Helpfully though, Howard Davies specifically mentioned Thorpe's Between Each Breath in his speech at the ceremony two years ago, so Hodd should be in with a shot - if Jonathan Cape have submitted it that is. And 'if' is a big word. It also looks like an excellent year for literary fiction, so I'm expecting a really strong longlist, which may look something - or, more likely, nothing - like this:

Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood
A.S. Byatt - The Children's Book
Rana Dasgupta - Solo
Jill Dawson - The Great Lover
Francesca Kay - An Equal Stillness
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer - The Glass Room
Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin
Caryl Phillips - In The Falling Snow
Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn
William Trevor - Love and Summer
Elise Valmorbida - The Winding Stick

Although these are the thirteen books I would most like to see on the longlist:

Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood
Anthony Cartwright - Heartland
J.M. Coetzee - Summertime
Rana Dasgupta - Solo
Sebastian Faulks - A Week in December
M. J. Hyland - This is How
Simon Mawer - The Glass Room
Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin
James Palumbo - Tomas
Adam Thorpe - Hodd
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn
Fay Weldon - Chalcot Crescent
Elise Valmorbida - The Winding Stick

Will Hodd make it? I'm all aquiver.