New Delhi, Nov 1
Of the 13 novels longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize, six writers hailed from the UK, three from the US and two each from Ireland and Canada. In the shortlist, there were two novels from the US, three from UK and one from Canada. Does this imply that the prize has little regard for diversity? The Booker Prize Foundation's Literary Director Gaby Wood contested the charge, pointing to the values that remain at the heart of the much-coveted annual prize.
Wood, who was herself a judge for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, the year Julian Barnes won with "The Sense of An Ending", said that the Booker Prize "cares very much about diversity", and this is achieved through its judges who have "a variety of reading experiences and literary tastes".
"First of all, it's important for the judges to not all be -- and not even predominantly be -- white and male. Secondly, they must, between them, have a variety of reading experiences, and a variety of literary tastes. Diversity is not just to do with how things look to the outside world -- its real significance in this case is in how receptive judges are to diversity of geography and genre, as well as to diversity of race and gender, in the books under consideration," Wood told IANS in an email interview from London.
She was appointed as the Literary Director of the Booker Foundation "after a careful selection process" in April 2015, following the death of her predecessor, British editor, publisher and author Ion Trewin.
She said that if the balance of judges is right -- with a good chair and mutual respect all around -- then every good book stands a chance of finding its ideal reader on the panel. "Once that's established, you have to let them get on with the job of identifying what they consider to be the best fiction of the year," she explained.
Wood shared that senior figures in the UK publishing industry are quick to note how relatively un-diverse that industry has been.
"A couple of years ago, the Man Booker Prize longlist was said in some quarters to have a relative lack of diversity, yet a (quick, unofficial and confidential) glance at the submissions list revealed that the longlist was, proportionally, far more diverse than the collection of books under consideration. Because these details are confidential no outsider is in a position to know, but we are confident that our judges are selecting the best fiction from what they're sent," she maintained.
She went on to say that the last couple of prize cycles have been judged by majority-female panels, there has been a wide range of ages, they have been chaired, consecutively, by intellectuals of African descent. These facts, she reminded, have not been emphasised.
"Because the age, gender or ethnicity of those people are not their qualifications for judging the prize," she asserted.
As for this year's longlist and shortlist, Wood maintained that it's impossible to draw conclusions of that kind -- that the prize has little regard for diversity -- from one year alone. She added that it's actually quite difficult to discern any sort of trend over a few years because the judges change annually.
"Also, I'm a little wary of criticisms that might lead to dangerously tokenistic defences: Are we to point out, for instance, that the two Canadians on the longlist are of Sri Lankan and Ghanaian descent, respectively? No: They are Canadian, and to rhetorically strip them of their citizenship in an attempt to point out the Prize's high regard for diversity would be antithetical to the Prize's purpose," she said.
Wood was previously the Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph. In her stint with the newspaper, she reinvigorated the paper's literary coverage, was instrumental in its sponsorship of the Hay Festival, and profiled leading cultural and public figures from Toni Morrison to Boris Johnson.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is one of the most coveted literary prizes, awarding a whopping 50,000 pounds annually. Apart from the international recognition that the Prize brings to the winning novelist, it also tremendously boosts the sales of the winning novel. In the week following the 2016 winner's announcement, for example, sales of "The Sellout" by Paul Beatty increased by 658 per cent.
The Man Booker Prize "cares very much about diversity" and the Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, Gaby Wood, is confident that the Prize is selecting the best fiction from what is submitted to it every year. But the submissions, in the first place, are imperiled by the restriction of being published in the UK. Can a truly global literary award, as it is regarded, ignore all the novels not published in the UK and yet claim to recognise "the finest in fiction"?In "an elimination of the premise of citizenship", Wood told IANS, the rules were recently amended, opening the doors to Irish publishers to submit their works so that anyone writing in English and published in the UK could be considered."The writers themselves could be Turkish, Chinese, etc; the books, in a literal sense, had to be British -- that is, published here. So it wasn't really an expansion, it was an elimination of the premise of citizenship. The parameters regarding publication have remained the same: All books submitted must have UK or Irish ISBNs, and 'UK and Ireland' is a common delineation in those terms, so it made sense for that particular amendment to be made," Wood said.She was appointed the Literary Director of the Booker Foundation "after a careful selection process" in April 2015, following the death of her predecessor Ion Trewin, an editor, publisher and author.Wood maintained that the Man Booker Prize is designed to reflect the experience of the British reader. She said that in considering all that is available to readers in the UK, the design of the Prize is such that it corroborates with the unlikeliness of a reader standing in a bookshop and judging a book based on the passport of its author.But even according to the existing rules, a novelist from a country like India, which is now the second-largest publishing market in English language worldwide, hailed by several prominent literary stalwarts as the emerging capital of global literature, hosting more literary events and selling more books than most other countries, still requires to be published in the UK to compete for the award.On this being pointed out and on being asked whether she, in her capacity as the Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, felt a need to re-look at some of the rules to make the Prize truly global in its character, she said it's something they "think about" but maintained that the restriction of being published in the UK is the "most coherent one"."It's interesting you should raise this question, though, because, of course, it's something we think about. It's important to view the Man Booker Prize for Fiction alongside its younger sibling, the Man Booker International Prize, which rewards fiction translated into English. We think this offers a good global span, but it has to have some parameters, or the judging process would be impossible. The restriction of being published in the UK and available to UK readers is the most coherent one we've thought of," she added.Wood acknowledged that fiction written in English but not published in the UK, or fiction written in other languages but not translated in the UK, can't be considered under the current rules."But we hope that the openness of Man Booker judges to reading books from all over the world will encourage British and Irish publishers to take on more fiction from elsewhere," she said.And as for India, she said that she would love to have more Indian authors on the judging panel. "But when I ask, they are mostly too busy writing to take part -- which I think is, in its own way, a good thing for literature," she shared.Wood pointed out that each year, the Frankfurt Book Fair takes place just before the Man Booker winner is announced. "And each year we're reminded that many writers on the shortlist establish lifelong relationships with international publishers as a result. So although the Prize sheds direct light on one book by each author, it will lead those authors to publishers who will go on to publish all of their books, all over the world, in the future," she added.Wood, who, as the head of books at the Daily Telegraph, "reinvigorated the paper's literary coverage", is an accomplished author and is published widely. In continuation with her prior accomplishments, as the Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, she has had a ringside view of literature globally. All of this (and more) at a time when there has been a parallel rise of social media, platforms like Netflix, studies suggesting that human attention span is shrinking and the closing down of physical bookstores across the globe at a fast pace."Without question, books are here to stay. They may shift shape, but reading will remain, and fiction will always allow people to expand their capacity for imagination and empathy. You see this everywhere, from primary schools to prisons. But I also think of books as being part of the whole world, not just part of the book world, and I worry that we can get blinkered. If people's attention spans change, if films or TV series create new structures for telling stories, if social media generates a new language: Those are all things from which fiction can benefit," she said in response to a question on what the future holds for books.Wood added that sometimes there is too much interest in the creation of a "finely crafted novel" and not enough interest in "reflecting various forms of reality or thought"."If the nature of reading changes, then writing can too, and in this way we all move forward. The 2018 Man Booker winner, 'Milkman' by Anna Burns, is a case in point. Some people have found it difficult to read, others have found it to be coruscatingly true to life. The fact is, it is like life, a certain kind of life, but it is not like very many novels. Of course, an old-fashioned novel can still come out as the strongest, but we can't want all novels to be alike. We have to be open to hearing voices that affect us, however they go about it," she said.(Saket Suman can be contacted at [email protected])
