Robert McCrum The day before the 2000 Booker Prize shortlist was announced, I received a puzzling e-mail announcing the selection of JG Ballard (Super Cannes), Zadie Smith (White Teeth), Robert Edric (The Book of the Heathen), Amitav Ghosh (The Glass Palace), Michael Ondaatje (Anil’s Ghost) and Paul Golding (The Abomination). It was only when I scrolled down and saw Simon Jenkins, the chairman of the jury, reportedly saying: “I’ve never knowingly bought anything recommended by Jeffrey Archer” and his fellow judge, Professor Roy Foster, acclaimed biographer of WB Yeats, observing: “I like John Grisham, but I prefer non-fiction myself – sports books, DIY, that sort of thing”, that I realised (it had been a long day) that this was a laborious spoof, perpetrated, as it happens, by the Books Online (BOL) website. So when the actual shortlist was announced the next day, my first thought was that this, too, was a spoof. Who were these writers? Never mind the Ballards and the Ondaatjes – where were the novelists whose work so many had so confidently predicted would be chosen: Julian Barnes (Love Etc), Douglas Galbraith (The Rising Sun), Will Self (How the Dead Live), Timothy Findley (Pilgrim) and Patrick McGrath (Martha Peake)? And where was Zadie Smith, whose first novel everyone had greeted so enthusiastically in January? Well, never confuse the improbable with the impossible. Once the shock of the new had worn off, I began to understand that this shortlist, apparently strange and arbitrary, was actually very good indeed. One of the complaints often levelled against Britain’s premier literary prize is that it functions as a kind of club, nominating a certain kind of “literary fiction” chosen from a limited pool of potential “Booker” writers. Historically, there is some truth in this accusation. Witness the way in which some established English novelists angle to get their books published during the Booker season. Deliberately or not, this millennial short list has turned its back on a number of established writers, any one of whom might, in another year, deserve a place on some other ideal Booker shortlist – for instance, Blake Morrison, Jeannette Winterson, John Banville, Jane Gardam and Lawrence Norfolk. The panel has also addressed another regular jibe against the prize by eschewing new work by Indian, Australian and South African novelists. In the past, this prize has sometimes seemed like a showcase for so-called “Commonwealth” literature. I suspect that this Booker panel has worked rather harder than some of its predecessors.
For many people, this is the one moment in the year when “new fiction” becomes an important part of their conversations. It is good that such readers are introduced to writers whose works they’ve never heard of or were ever likely to hear of. Many critics have said that this has not been a vintage year for new fiction in English. In racing terms, the race has never been so wide open. How good, then, is this selection? There is, of course, no accounting for taste and every reader will have his or her favourite. On balance, and allowing for the vagaries of literary- critical debate within an unusually well- qualified jury, this seems to me to be a good shortlist: challenging, fresh, unusual and fairly wide-ranging. The presence of two old-stagers – Margaret Atwood (her fourth nomination) and Kazuo Ishiguro (his fourth nomination, including a win in 1989) – will satisfy those who want some continuity with the past. The preponderance of four new arrivals sustains Booker’s claim to identify whatever is new and interesting in the literary culture of the day.
In recent years, many commentators (myself included) have had fun denouncing the Booker Prize for its irrelevance, its incompetence and its fundamental philistinism. Today, Jenkins and his colleagues have rescued it from contempt. Robert McCrum is the literary editor of The Observer. The Booker winner will be announced on November 7