The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Tokenism on Booker?

10.09.08

"Token Asian; Oirish misery novelist; another token Asian; Guardian woman; gay; token Australian wild-card with beard who looks definitely a bit foreign. Hmm. I wonder which of the usual suspects on the shortlist is going to win the Booker Prize this year," is how an opinion piece in today's Telegraph responds to the announcement of the Booker shortlist.

"I reckon that, too often, what our literary prize panels confuse with proper writing is in fact just overwriting, and that the problem is exacerbated by a salon of smug, sanctimonious, mostly Left-leaning literary-tastemakers (and gullible book groups) who feel a novel isn't "valid" unless it's a) a bit hard to read, b) weighed down with purple prose or poetry, c) socially worthy (madness, disability, child abuse etc) and d) best of all, imbued with lashings of fashionable, Zadie-Smith-style, melting-pot ethnic exoticism."

Telegraph

Authors Books The Man Booker Prize

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