Inside Amazon.com

The Booker Prize potentates (in the persons in this go-round of judges Victoria Glendenning, Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan) have chosen six finalists for the Best of the Booker prize (out of the 41 Booker winners eligible):




• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999 winner)




• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (1995)




• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988)




• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)




• The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (1974)




• The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell (1973)




Notable snubs? Life of Pi? The English Patient? Possession? (Those are at least among the most popular winners in the US.) At this point, the selection of the winner is up to “you”: that is, you can vote for the winner on the Man Booker website, although at this hour I can’t see how to do it. Not that I could really do so myself in good conscience: it reveals me as either poorly read or Anglophobic (or both!) that I’ve read exactly none of the well-known nominees. But nevertheless I’ll root (and even vote) for The Siege of Krishnapur for the sole reason that it’s published in the States by New York Review Books, whose exquisite taste has never ever steered me wrong.




And meanwhile, the required gripes. Yes, I enjoy book awards with some shamelessness, and I don’t even mind the idea of a Best of the Booker. But what’s embarrassing about this one is the prizegivers’ lack of patience. Because they did this once before, for the Booker’s 25th anniversary (the winner: Midnight’s Children). So is it their 50th anniversary now? No, it’s just the 40th. They just couldn’t wait, could they? Ten years is a long time when you’re itchy for PR in the downtime between fall prize seasons. But at this rate of accelerated impatience they’ll want to do this again for the 45th anniversary, and before long they’ll be running an updated contest every year: “Will Rushdie hold the title for one more year?” Even I might stop posting on the subject at that point. –Tom