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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
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Best of Booker shortlist: Rushdie in, Naipaul out

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Salman Rushdie heads a six-strong shortlist of some of the world’s best known writers, one of whom will be chosen by the British public for the Best of Booker award to be announced to mark the award’s 40th anniversary.

Surprisingly, V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State which won a Booker in 1971 and regarded as one of the seminal works in the post-colonial literary canon, has been left out despite the renewed interest in him in the wake of his widely-debated official biography published recently.

Rushdie has been picked for Midnight’s Children, which became an instant international literary sensation and remains his best work since it was published 27 years ago. It won him the 1981 Booker Prize and the Booker of Bookers in 1993.

A sprawling and often-difficult-to-digest novel set in post-independent India, with a child born at the stroke of the midnight of 1947 at the heart the story, Midnight’s Children will be best remembered for legitimising the use of Indian English. It put “Hinglish” on the world map. Some of the Hindu/Urdu words used in the novel have since become part of the “official” English vocabulary.

Others on the shortlist, all previous Booker winners, are: Nadine Gordimer (The Conservationist, 1974); J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace, 1999); Peter Carey (Oscar and Lucinda, 1988); Pat Barker (The Ghost Road, 1995); and J.G. Farrell (The Siege of Krishnapur, 1973).

Victoria Glendinning, the well-known biographer who chaired the three-member panel of judges, said it was “very tough” drawing up the list.

“But we really feel that the six novels we picked represent the best fiction writing of the past 40 years and that each one will stand the test of time. As to which of the six is the most important, and the most enjoyable, that is up to the readers to decide,” she said as bookies put their money on Midnight’s Children.

Another judge, John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London, said the aim was to pick the best book without being distracted by hype.

“As judges we were consciously trying to blot out the hype and trying to erase expected judgements,” he said, adding that Midnight’s Children had “an ebullience and a brilliance” that made it a great novel.

Voting, which will take place through reading groups, libraries and bookshops, began on Monday. The prize will be announced on July 10.

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