The Man Booker Prize 2011 Shortlist

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2011 has just been announced – and this year’s choices are somewhat, er, contentious, to say the least.

While the inclusion of perpetual Booker bridesmaid, Julian Barnes, for his novel, The Sense of An Ending, was widely expected, other hot favourites have been controversially dropped, including Sebastian Barry’s On Canaan’s Side and Alan Hollinghurst’s highly praised The Stranger’s Child.

The shortlist features four British and two Canadian novelists (only authors from the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland and Zimbabwe are eligible for the prize, thereby omitting American authors)

The most surprising feature of this year’s shortlist is the inclusion of two debut authors - Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English and AD Miller for Snowdrops.

The full shortlist is as follows (whittled down from 13 longlisted titles):

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape)
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 Books)
AD Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic Books)

(Pigeon English has been reviewed on this blog, as has Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, links below.
**Spoiler alert**: Thumbs up for Pigeon English, resounding thumbs down for Edugyan's offering.)

Those who did not make the cut:

Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Yvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
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)

The winner of the 2011 Prize will be announced at a reception at London’s Guildhall on Tuesday, October 18th. The winner will receive a cash prize of £50,000, while the other shortlisted nominees will each get £2,500 with a designer-bound edition of the book.

Julian Barnes

For what it’s worth, my money is on Julian Barnes – The Sense of an Ending is his fourth appearance on a Booker longlist, so surely a win for him is long overdue. But, given the unpredictability of this year’s judging panel, who knows what will happen on the night!

Review of Pigeon English:
http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2011/05/cautionary-tale.html
Review of Half Blood Blues: http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2011/08/half-blood-blues-by-esi-edugyan-missed.html

UPDATE: And the winner is ... Julian Barnes for A Sense of an Ending.

Man Booker Prize 2011 - Longlist announced!

The books longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize have just been announced.

The 'Booker's Dozen' are:

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)

The titles were chosen by a committee of five judges chaired by the author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington.

The shortlist of six titles will be announced on September 6, while the winner will be crowned at London's Guildhall on October 18.

Click here for a LoveLifeFoodArt review of Pigeon English:
http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2011/05/cautionary-tale.html

In A Strange Room - Damon Galgut

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2010, In A Strange Room is the second offering by South African author Damon Galgut to be considered for this prestigious literary award. (The first was The Good Doctor, which was shortlisted for the prize in 2003.) After reading just the first couple of pages of In A Strange Room, it becomes obvious to the reader why Galgut is a perennial favourite of the Man Booker judges, despite losing out to DBC Pierre and Howard Jacobson in 2003 and 2010 respectively.

In A Strange Room is a highly accomplished, if completely unconventional, piece of work. Masquerading as a set of three stories which document the travels of ‘Damon’ (the protagonist) around Lesotho, Central Africa and India, it soon becomes clear that this triptych of prose is more than just a collection of run-of-the-mill travel writings. Exploring themes of love, loss, loneliness, suicide and death, the book takes the reader on a journey which transcends the geographical. As we follow Damon’s aimless meandering around vast swathes of Africa and India, and witness his inability to form lasting human connections, we come to the uncomfortable realisation that his relentless travelling is really just a desperate, but ultimately futile, attempt to escape from himself. Galgut forces the reader to examine Damon’s motivations, and by default, our own ... which can sometimes make for uncomfortable reading.

Damon Galgut

But perhaps the real success of this book lies in the unconventionality of its construction. Although classified as a novel, In A Strange Room is a piece of work that simply refuses to be defined. Throughout, the reader finds himself constantly trying, and failing, to pigeonhole this book into a specific genre. Is it fact or fiction? Memoir or travelogue? Novel or a collection of longish short-stories? The answer, of course, is all of the above. And therein lies the book’s appeal. In his blatant flouting of genre, the author creates a sense of dislocation and other-worldliness which complements the protagonist’s feeling of displacement. This blurring of distinctions is something at which Galgut excels, and it is a talent not confined to the differentiations of genre - the author’s haphazard approach to punctuation (in particular, his apparent disdain for the question mark) is similarly rebellious and equally beneficial to the book as a whole.

In A Strange Room is a profoundly moving and insightful commentary on the inherent loneliness of the human condition and the fragility of all human relationships. Haunting, evocative and completely mesmerizing, it is a must-read for anyone interested in the complex nature of our interactions with ourselves and the world we live in.

4 / 5
In A Strange Room is published by Atlanntic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Le Carré Refuses to Come in From the Cold.

The Man Booker Prize is no stranger to the machinations of the murky world of public relations. In fact, this particular literary award is one of the most publicity-driven in the industry.

Each year, in the run up to the award ceremony, an unrelenting wave of press releases issue forth from Man Booker HQ, with the express aim of drumming up the maximum amount of media attention. And in this endeavour the Man Booker organisers have been spectacularly successful; the publicity generated for the shortlisted nominees makes the Man Booker one of the most sought-after awards in the industry (although, the £50,000 prize pot is hardly a disincentive either!). In short, PR has become the lifeblood of the Man Booker Prize.

Spare a thought, then, for the Man Booker International Prize. Often regarded as the poor relation to the more widely-known Man Booker Prize, the International award was set up in 2005 as a biennial event to complement the original. The International Prize focuses on a writer’s entire body of work, and judges the author on his or her overall contribution to literature. Unfortunately, the Man Booker International Prize has failed to capture the imagination of media commentators and has not managed to achieve the dizzying heights of press attention enjoyed by its older cousin … until now.

Today, in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney, with a relatively modest amount of fanfare, the short-listed nominees for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize were announced. The press reaction was largely muted and perfunctory – until one of the nominees, John le Carré, author of such celebrated novels as The Spy Who Came in From The Cold and The Constant Gardener, whipped up a maelstrom of controversy…

In a move which will doubtless have Man Booker International’s PR minions doing a happy dance around the office in unrestrained glee, le Carré dramatically requested that his name be withdrawn from contention. In a statement issued through his publishers, le Carré said, "I am enormously flattered to be named as a finalist of the 2011 Man Booker International prize. However, I do not compete for literary prizes and have therefore asked for my name to be withdrawn."

If this was not enough to get the pundits salivating, the response of Rick Gekoski, the chairman of the judging panel, certainly was. Gekoski pointedly disregarded le Carré’s request by saying, "John le Carré's name will, of course, remain on the list. We are disappointed that he wants to withdraw from further consideration because we are great admirers of his work."

And so it appears that the Man Booker International Prize is faced with a stand-off between an unwilling nominee and a dogmatic judge … and it seems neither party is willing to concede ground.

Although it is highly unlikely that the judging panel will now award the prize to their recalcitrant nominee, le Carré’s refusal to participate has generated enormous publicity for the Man Booker International Prize, ensuring it will be one of the most closely watched literary awards in recent years – and this can only benefit all concerned.

Three cheers for John le Carré!

The complete list of the 2011 Man Booker International Prize shortlist is as follows:

 - Wang Anyi (China)

 - Juan Goytisolo (Spain)

 - James Kelman (UK)

 - John le Carre (UK)

 - Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)

 - David Malouf (Australia)
 - Dacia Maraini (Italy)
 - Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada)
 - Philip Pullman (UK)
 - Marilynne Robinson (USA)
 - Philip Roth (US)
 - Su Tong (China)
 - Anne Tyler (US)

Previous Winners of the Man Booker International Prize:
 - 2005 Ismail Kadare (Albania)
 - 2007 Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
 - 2009 Alice Munro (Canada)

The winner of the 2011 prize will be announced at the Sydney Writers Festival on May 18th.

Update: The Man Booker International Prize for 2011 was awarded to Philip Roth.  The decision was not unanimous - feminist author and publisher, Carmen Callil has resigned from the judging panel in protest.