Names, novels and the Booker

The Man Booker Prize was instituted in 1969 to reward the ‘best' novel of the year written by a citizen of a Commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland. This annual prize is so influential now that it transforms the fortunes of authors and their publishers. But once in a while it seems to get deflected from its stated purpose, giving rise to the suspicion that it is awarded not so much for the book in contention as for the whole body of work of the writer. Nobody doubted that Margaret Atwood, shortlisted thrice before she won in 2000, was the most deserving winner. But, as it was hotly debated then, did she really win for The Blind Assassin or was it that it was no longer possible to ignore an author of her stature? When Ian McEwan, rated by The Times as one of “the 50 greatest British writers since 1945,” won for Amsterdam in 1998, the question was asked: was it the literary merit of the novel or his literary oeuvre that did it? This year's prize engenders a similar feeling of discomfort. Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending is an endearing and enjoyable book.

But this resonant semi-autobiographical novella about growing up in the face of the unreliability of memory, the capacity for self-deception, and the encumbrance of guilt is a much slighter work than his wickedly funny and architecturally complex A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters, the erudite and meditative Flaubert's Parrot, and the inventive quasi-historical Arthur and George.

With an output of 11 novels and a half-a-dozen works of non-fiction (not to mention pseudonymously written crime novels), Barnes's place in Britain's literary A-list is well established. Shortlisted for the award, the 65-year-old novelist was justified in feeling “mild paranoia” on whether he would ever win a Booker, which he once described as a “posh bingo.” In this year's shortlist, which the chairperson of the judges declared controversially was chosen for “readability” (as opposed to literary inventiveness or merit, inferred some critics), Barnes was the only weighty name, the odds-on favourite of bookmakers. Of course, the Booker usually places novels well above names, which is what lends this prize its special and seemingly impudent appeal.

The award has brought prestige and attention to new novelists (Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children was his second, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things was her debut). It has also gone to a number of other richly deserving works such as Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, and, more recently, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. The Prize has had its share of controversies, but is only the richer for it. Hindu News