Piece of Pi (The Booker Prize in general)

Member Name: pje

Product:	The Booker Prize in general
Date:	19/08/01 (650 review reads)
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Disadvantages: Some of the books can be a hard slog.

Canadian Yann Martel won the £50,000 MAN Booker Prize 2002 for 'Life of Pi' - his surreal tale of a young boy who, following a shipwreck, is left drifting in the Pacific in a lifeboat along with various animals from his family's zoo, including a tiger called Richard Parker!

The judges were split 4-1 in his favour (I suspect some joker preferred Sarah Waters' Fingersmith - awarding the Booker Prize to that would have been like giving an haute cuisine award to a bowl of Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.)

Even before the long-list was announced, this was a book I wanted to read, and, with the possible exception of Carol Shields' Unless (which I'm delighted to say I've just won from www.bookmunch.com), Life of Pi was the only book on the short-list I was looking forward to reading. Until, that is, I started William Trevor's book The Story of Lucy Gault, which I have now fallen in love with, so I was slightly disappointed that he missed out.

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SHORT-LIST: [September 24th 2002]
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Yann Martel - Life of Pi

Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters

Carol Shields - Unless

William Trevor - The Story of Lucy Gault

Sarah Waters - Fingersmith

Tim Winton - Dirt Music


Last year I suspected that Peter Carey would win even before the long-list was revealed. (I wish I'd stuck a bet on!) But I wouldn't have predicted any of this year's short-list (with the possible exception of Rohinton Mistry). William Boyd and Zadie Smith were my tips, while the bookies made Howard Jacobson favourite. But like last year, when the bookies' favourite (Beryl Bainbridge) didn't make the cut, the judges have been a little bit contrary.

This year's field looks wide open. Those perennially off-target bookies have now plumped for William Trevor as favourite, which su

rprises me because Carol Shields has already won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Orange Prize. But then again the central character in her novel is a writer - and there are two things I'm sick of writers writing about: writers, and the war. So I think I'd make Rohinton Mistry the favourite, although the only one I'm looking forward to reading is 'The Life Of Pi'.

But these books had better be good, that's all I can say - because I (and many others) would rather read William Boyd, Zadie Smith or even Will Self, and I feel the judges are trying to manipulate us into reading other less-fashionable authors. But the danger is that if people pick up the short-listed books, shake their heads, yawn, and think: "no thanks, that sounds dull" it perpetuates the notion that literary fiction is worthy and dull.

Bizarrely, judges Lisa Jardine and David Baddiel both claimed that they hadn't even known of the existence of Irvine Welsh's 'Porno' because it wasn't submitted to them, complaining that publishers' tended only to submit "heavyweight" and "humourless" novels. Well, the judges can "call-in" novels which aren't submitted to them, which they did with another fourteen books not originally among the 116 that publishers sent them. However, publishers do sometimes choose not to submit books by well known authors, assuming (or perhaps gambling) that they will be called-in by the judges. The judges' comments seem to have left Welsh's publisher, Jonathan Cape, with egg on their face.

And has the old politically correct commonwealth quota system returned?
At the announcement of the short-list, the chair (sic) of the judges, Lisa Jardine, said:

"We arrived at a wonderfully diverse shortlist with enormous enjoyment.
The strong showing of Commonwealth writers shows the real importance
of the Man Booker Prize's criteria for entr

y"

Is that her way of saying: "This is a Commonwealth Prize for Commonwealth people.
We'll have no troublesome Yanks here" - or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Cynical souls like myself have noticed that short-lists can be somewhat formulaic. Judges seem to feel duty-bound to represent all four corners of the Commonwealth and Ireland, so there always seems to be:- one book by an Irish writer; one by an Indian writer; one or two from Australia, Africa or Canada; one or two debut novels; oh, and one or two from England. [N.B. I removed this paragraph after the announcement of last year's short-list, but I re-instated it after seeing this year's!]
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The Booker Prize for the best novel of the year was inspired by the French Prix Goncourt, and was first awarded in 1969. Only writers from the Commonwealth & Ireland are eligible. From 2002 the prize is worth £50,000, compared to £20,000 in previous years.

The judging panel usually consists of a literary editor, a critic, a novelist, an academic and a celebrity. This year the panel is chaired by the historian, writer and broadcaster Professor Lisa Jardine, and includes comedian and author David Baddiel; Erica Wagner - the literary editor of the Times; and authors Salley Vickers ('Miss Garnet's Angel') and Russell Celyn Jones.

Although no longer sponsored by Booker plc (the frozen food firm) it retains the name, but is now officially The Man Booker Prize. (Not to be confused with the league table of most hated Premiership referees.) New sponsors The Man Group are "a leading global provider of investment products" apparently.

There was controversy earlier this year when it was suggested that the prize might be opened up to American authors in future. Er, why? The Booker Prize is specifically a Commonwealth-based prize, and always
has
been. If there is a clamour for a world prize for literature, then why not instigate a new one?
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LONG-LIST: [19th August 2002]
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The judges considered 130 books and whittled them down to these twenty:

Dannie Abse - The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glass
John Banville - Shroud
Joan Barfoot - Critical Injuries
William Boyd - Any Human Heart
Anita Brookner - The Next Big Thing
Robert Edric - Peacetime
Michael Frayn - Spies
Linda Grant - Still Here
Philip Hensher - The Mulberry Empire
Howard Jacobson - Who's Sorry Now?
Yann Martel - Life of Pi
Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters
Will Self - Dorian - an Imitation
Carol Shields - Unless
Zadie Smith - The Autograph Man
Colin Thubron - To The Last City
William Trevor - The Story of Lucy Gault
Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
Tim Winton - Dirt Music
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It's traditional with the Booker Prize for there to be some notable omissions, and this year's high-profile losers included A.S. Byatt, Barry Unsworth, Irvine Welsh's 'Porno'
(the sequel to 'Trainspotting') and Janice Galloway's exploration of the life of pianist Clara Schumann (the wife of the composer). Personally I was disappointed not to see Tim Lott's 'Rumours of a Hurricane' in there, but the only real surprise was that the judges ignored 'That They May Face The Rising Sun' - John McGahern's first novel for 12 years.

Sometimes I feel the judges (although they are different every year) are influenced
by the mistakes of the past. So, Pat Barker won for the third part of her 'Regeneration' trilogy, the first part having been overlooked; Margaret A
twood fina
lly won in 2000,
to make up for missing out with' The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Alias Grace'; Peter Carey
won three years after 'Illywhacker' lost to a controversial choice ('The Bone People');
and was it coincidence that James Kelman won the year after the judges failed to spot Irvine Welsh's 'Trainspotting'?
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PREVIOUS WINNERS
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1969 P.H.Newby - Something To Answer For
1970 Bernice Rubens - The Elected Member
1971 V.S.Naipaul - In A Free State
1972 John Berger - G
1973 J.G.Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
1974 =Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist
1974 =Stanley Middleton - Holiday
1975 R.P.Jhabvala - Heat and Dust
1976 David Storey - Saville
1977 Paul Scott - Staying On
1978 Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea
1979 Penelope Fitzgerald - Offshore
1980 William Golding - Rites of Passage
1981 Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
1982 Thomas Keneally - Schindler's Ark
1983 J.M.Coetzee - The Life and Times of Michael K.
1984 Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac
1985 Keri Hulme - The Bone People
1986 Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils
1987 Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger
1988 Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda
1989 Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
1990 A.S.Byatt - Possession
1991 Ben Okri - The Famished Road
1992 =Barry Unsworth - Sacred Hunger
1992 =Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient
1993 Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha
1994 James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late
1995 Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
1996 Graham Swift - Last Orders
1997 Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
1998 Ian McEwan - Amsterdam
1999 J.M.Coetzee - Disgrace
2000 Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
2001 Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
2002 Yann Martel - Life of Pi <
br>2003 DBC Pierre - Vernon God Little
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THE 2001 WINNER
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The £20,000 prize was awarded to:

PETER CAREY for his novel 'TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG'.

Ned Kelly is Australia's equivalent of Robin Hood, avoiding capture for two years, and becoming an anti-establishment folk hero. He is also remembered for the iron mask and body armour he wore in a gun battle with the police.

Written in the form of a bundle of letters from Kelly to a fictitious daughter, and based on letters the outlaw wrote to a bank clerk, Carey conveys the speech of the legendary outlaw very realistically by using imperfect grammar and little punctuation. (Amazingly, there isn't a single comma in the whole book!)

A book that is very readable, as well as being a brilliant linguistic achievement. It's the second time Carey has won the prize, having won in 1988 with 'Oscar and Lucinda'.

If reading the book doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Ned Kelly go to:

http://www.ironoutlaw.com/
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Having read 16 out of the 36 winners so far, my favourite is The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro's wonderfully subtle and poignant tale of misplaced loyalty and repressed emotion.

My favourite writer of the bunch has to be John Berger though. (If you haven't read
'King: A Street Story' you really should.) A communist, when he won the prize in 1972,
he announced that he was giving the prize money to the Black Panther movement.
A.S.Byatt on the other hand announced that the prize would pay for a new swimming pool in the garden of her French retreat!

The vintage years of the Booker may well have been 1980-84:

1980 saw a battle royal between William Golding and Anthony Bur
gess (for his extraordinarily erudite novel 'Earthly Pow
ers' - you will need a very big dictionary if you want to read that). And there were so many good books to choose from in 1981 that the judges extended the short-list. In the end Salman Rushdie saw off the likes of Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing and Ian McEwan with the book that established his reputation - 'Midnight's Children' (later voted the Booker of Bookers).

Rushdie almost won the following year as well, the judges were split between his novel 'Shame', and J.M.Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K'. The deciding vote belonged to Fay Weldon, who couldn't make up her mind! I think it would have been easier if Salman hadn't won the year before, because Shame is a brilliantly witty book.

But for me 1984 was the best, when Anita Brookner's 'Hotel Du Lac' triumphed over J.G. Ballard's inspirational 'Empire of the Sun', Penelope Lively's 'According To Mark', Anita Desai's 'In Custody', David Lodge's 'Small World', and the ever-so-clever 'Flaubert's Parrot' by Julian Barnes . They couldn't go wrong there!

And I have to say that the 2001 short-list...

Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
Ian McEwan - An Atonement
Andrew Miller - Oxygen
David Mitchell - Number 9 Dream
Rachel Seiffert - The Dark Room
Ali Smith - Hotel World

...was equally enjoyable (and readable!)
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The official website of the Booker Prize is:

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/home.asp


For more information about previous winners check out:

http://www.powells.com/prizes/booker.html


Or, for a full list of all 195 books short-listed since 1969 go to:

http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/prizes/shortlst.h
tml
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