Booker Prize director speaks out after Chaudhuri criticisms

The Man Booker Prize’s literary director Gaby Wood has defended the award saying it does not “privilege buying over borrowing” and does not “promote capitalism”.

She was speaking after author Amit Chaudhuri earlier this week blasted the entry criteria for the esteemed literary award for being “disingenuous” because it excludes certain forms of fiction” (short stories and novellas are not eligible) and because there is a limit on the number of novels a year publishers can submit to it. “What it creates is not so much a form of attention but a midnight ball,” he said.

Writing in The Guardian, he continued: “The idea that a ‘book of the year’ can be assessed annually by a bunch of people – judges who have to read almost a book a day – is absurd, as is the idea that this is any way of honouring a writer. A writer will be judged over time, by their oeuvre, and by readers and other writers who have continued to find new meaning in their writing.”

Chaudhuri also criticised writers’ acceptance of the prize’s value. “Most will feel that it doesn’t speak to why they’re writers at all, but few will discuss this openly. Acceptance is one of the most dismaying political consequences of capitalism,” he wrote. “…The Booker now has a stranglehold on how people think of, read, and value books in Britain. It has no serious critics.”

Chaudhuri, a former Man Booker International Prize judge, went on to criticise the “obedient” press for treating the prize winner as “inevitable”.

He said: "The first marketing instrument is the longlist…13 novels arrayed like Cinderellas waiting to catch the prince’s eye. (Those not on the longlist find they’ve suddenly turned into maidservants.)...When the shortlist is announced, the enchantment lifts from those among the 13 not on it: they become figments of the imagination. Then the announcement of the winner renders invisible, as if by a wave of the wand, the other shortlisted writers. The princess and the prince are united as if the outcome was always inevitable: at least such is, largely, the obedient response of the press.”

Wood, literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said Chaudhuri raised “many interesting questions” which the organisers “welcome”, as they do “all debate about the prize”.

“The Man Booker Prize was originally set up (as the Booker) to encourage discussion of contemporary literature. That continues to be its purpose, and it does not privilege buying over borrowing, or listening to the authors live,” she said. “The prize doesn't promote capitalism, it promotes literature – and views reading as a creative, rather than consumerist, act.”

She added that the Booker Prize Foundation did “a great deal behind the scenes in other areas where literature lives” by funding an annual creative writing scholarship at the University of East Anglia along with other university and sixth form initiatives; working with libraries and reading groups, and with the National Literacy Trust to encourage reading in prisons.

“To clarify the judging process: thanks to the call-in system, and to well-informed judges and administrators, all novels that are eligible for the prize can be considered,” she added. “I have complete faith in the critical judgement that leads to the selection of books to which the prize draws attention.”

Chaudhuri is the author of six previous novels, including Odysseus Abroad (Oneworld) and A Strange and Sublime Address (Penguin), and two books of essays. He has been awarded the Commonwealth Literature Prize, the Betty Trask award, the LA Times Book Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among others.

His novel, Friend of My Youth (Faber & Faber) is published next week.