2008 Booker Short-list

The 2008 Booker short-list was announced on 9th September. It is a short-list of six, and consists of:

Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)

Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)

Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies)

Linda Grant (The Clothes on Their Backs)

Philip Hensher (The Northern Clemency)

Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)

Two first-time novelists—Arvind Adiga and Steve Toltz—have made it to the short-list, as did Sebastian Barry (for the second time), while the two previous winners—John Berger and Salman Rushdie—have not survived the cull.

My prediction was as follows:

Linda Grant (The Clothes On their Back)

Amitav Ghosh (The Sea of Poppies)

Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence)

Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)

Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)

So, four out of the five books I predicted would make it to the short-list, did, which is remarkable, even if I say so myself, seeing as I haven’t read any of the long-listed novels. Had I decided to predict six instead of five, I should have selected Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher. I wouldn’t have chosen Arvind Adiga; if I had to select another first-time novelist, I should have plumped for Joseph O’Neill’s ‘This Year’s Great American Novel’. Come to think of it, I’ll probably read The Netherland: it is a cricket novel, apparently; and many moons ago I used to be interested—to the extent I am capable of being interested in any sport—in this game. As Bill Bryson once remarked, cricket is a delicious game, full of microseconds of excitement scattered over five days. If you are unfortunate enough to develop a chronic illness, and the doctor prescribes rest and prohibits any kind of excitement, you should take to cricket immediately.

I am disappointed that Enchantress of Florence is not short-listed. It will, of course, make no difference to the sell of the novel, and legion of Rushdie's fans will lap it up.

Who will win the award? I should very much like Linda Grant to win, but Amitav Ghosh or Sebastian Barry may just pip her to the post. The winners in the last three years were Irish (Banville and Enright) and Indian (Desai), and one would expect that this year the winner would be from (for want of better phrase) a different background. Philp Hensher is the only English novelist amongst the short-listed authors. (There is Linda Grant, of course; but she is Jewish, and the usual stew of English class and race prejudice means most wouldn't consider her English, and describe her as British). I can’t immediately think of any Jewish novelists except Berice Rubens (who won decades ago) who have been awarded the prize.

I am rooting for Linda Grant.

2008 Booker Long-list

I have a great deal of admiration and sympathy for the judges of the Booker Award (or, for that matter, any literary prize). To trawl through more than hundred novels in six months, and to prepare long-lists and short-lists (which, let's face it, never satisfy all) can seem like a burden. Unless you are Philip Hensher, one of the long-listed authors this year, and himself a judge in 2001. Hensher, who perhaps is more widely known as a critic and reviewer than a novelist, famously declared a few years ago that he read an average of five books a week, and the number of novels he read in six months as a Booker judge was no more than his average frequency. But then Hensher is in that enviable position where he reads books to earn living. Wouldn't it be nice if you have the luxury of viewing your profession not as a real profession but an agreeable frame of mind, a way of going about things rather than things you exactly do?

This year’s Booker long-list, in keeping with the recent trend, has five debut novelists, four novelists from the Indian subcontinent, and a few established names including a couple of former Booker winners. The categories mentioned here are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

I have not read any of the long-listed novels, although I have read some or more novels of some or more long-listed authors. There are some novels I shall probably buy—Booker or no Booker—once the paperback editions are out: some because their authors are my favourites (Rushdie and Grant); some because I have enjoyed reading their authors’ previous novels (Ghosh, Hensher); some because their authors have been on my ‘to be read’ list for years and I have not so far got round to read any of their novels and I might as well begin with the Booker-long-listed novel (Barry); and some others because I am curious to find out what the fuss is about (Hanif). Finally there are some novels on the list which I shall read only if they go on to win the Booker (Adiga, Rob-Smith, de Krester, O’Neill, Arnold and Toltz). I should come clean and admit that I had not heard any of the authors in the last category till they, rather their novels, got long-listed for the Booker. It is a known fact that the novels which win prestigious literary awards such as the Booker enjoy a sharp uplift in their sales; I should very much doubt whether the long-listed novels enjoy similar good fortune, unless their authors are well-known and have a dedicated fan-following (in which case they do not depend on being long or short-listed for the Booker).

One of the long-listed authors is John Berger—I know, I know; he is not just a novelist: he is also an artist, essayist and a critic—who caused something of an upset in 1972 when he won the Booker award with his experimental novel, G, piping some worthy opponents (Thomas Keneally and David Storey) to the post, and then probably caused more upset by announcing that he was donating half his prize money to the Black Panther movement in protest of what he alleged was Booker’s colonialist policy in the West Indies. (Someone should have pointed out to Berger that the Black Panther movement had in fact dissolved two years before.) Will the old warhorse cause upset again with A to X, ‘A Story in Letters’? I think not.

Philip Hensher, another critic and reviewer, and himself a judge in 2001, is long-listed for Northern Clemency. I have read three of his earlier novels two of which—his debut novel, Kitchen Venom, and Pleasured—I enjoyed thoroughly, especially the former which was in the tradition of vintage Evelyn Waugh. The third, The Mulberry Empire, in which Hensher, in a departure from his earlier books, tried his hand at a historical epic, was so well-crafted it was almost contrived, and, despite being packed with dramatic set-pieces, was strangely soulless. What will Northern Clemency, which, at 740 pages, is the longest of the long-listed novels, be like? On the plus side, it promises to be a chronicle of the contemporary English life, something Hensher, in my opinion, excels at. On the other hand it is disconcerting to note that Hensher, apparently, took inspiration from ‘the great nineteenth century Russian novels’ when he wrote Northern Clemency (which perhaps explains the length of the novel). Judging by the less than exhilarating results the last time Hensher attempted something ambitious and sprawling, I believe my concern is justified. When one is getting a bit long in the tooth, one does not want to be left feeling underwhelmed, especially when one has shown the perseverance to trawl through more than 700 pages. Will Hensher win the Booker? I should doubt it.

Sea of Poppies is Amitav Ghosh’s seventh novel. Of his previous novels I have read two: The Calcutta Chromosome, which, I think, was his debut novel—I thought it was disappointingly lacking in depth; the novel’s subtitle was ‘a novel of fevers, delirium and discovery’; it was, for me, more like a novel of terrifying dullness—, and the splendid Glass Palace. In Sea of Poppies, Ghosh returns to the genre he handled so well in Glass Palace—historical epic. This is one to watch. Ghosh might just hit the jackpot.

Sebastian Barry was short-listed in 2005 for A Long Long Way. He is long-listed this year for The Secret Scripture, the heroine of which is the cousin of Eneas McNulty (Barry’s eponymous debut novel), who has spent longer time in an asylum in Ireland than either she or anyone can remember. The psychiatrist under whose care she is admitted is curious about the circumstances in which she was admitted. I find the subject matter interesting—stories of mentally unhinged and those who think they can cure them have always appealed to me; make of it what you will—and I should read it. If I like it, I’ll probably get hold of Barry’s debut novel.

Linda Grant is a favourite author of mine. I have read two of her previous novels—the Orange Prize winner When I Lived in Modern Times, and Still Here—and liked them both thoroughly. I shall definitely read Clothes on their Backs which tells the story of a Hungarian Jewish family. This is another subject that interests me and I expect the novel to be as engrossing, perceptive and witty as Grant’s earlier novels. I will not be surprised if it is short-listed. It may even win, the only factor weighing against it is it has sold very well—it was reprinted twice even before it was long-listed. Sounds cynical? Cynical? Moi?

Of the by now customary slew of debut novelists making it to the long-list, Tom Rob Smith has made a history of sorts: his novel, Child 44 is a thriller; and novels in this genre do not often get long or short-listed for literary awards. Unfair? Probably; but such is life. The other day I tuned into the BBC Radio 4 and found myself bang in the middle of a heated (the epithet should be used advisedly with regard to Beeb) discussion about what comprises literature and whether thrillers (or suspense novels as Patricia Highsmith was known to describe her novels) are literature, the occasion being the publication of the latest John le Carre novel (The Most Wanted Man). le Carre, of course has not won any literary award. Tom Rob Smith participated in the debate (no one should and will grudge him his fifteen minutes of fame), and, when the presenter suggested to him that it was an outrage that le Carre has been persistently overlooked for literary awards, pointed out (very reasonably, I thought) that the main reason for that was le Carre never gives permission to submit his novels for any awards. He also felt confident, having no doubt researched the subject at great length, to disabuse the BBC presenter of the notion that his, Rob Smith’s, novel was the first thriller to be long-listed for the Booker: Brian Moore was short-listed twice, in 1987 and 1990, for The Colour of Blood, and Lies of Silence. So well done Tom Rob Smith. However, I suspect that this is as good as it is going to be for Child 44. I can’t see the panel—unless they are driven by a sense of malicious hilarity—short-listing the book which moved one reviewer to write that he could not ‘respect a committee that decides to pick a book like Child 44’. Then there are the much-hyped The Netherland, this year’s Great American Novel (contractual terms require the use of this phrase in all reviews; while I have no plans of reviewing the book and I am absolutely positive that no one is going to log on to this blog, I shouldn’t take any risks), The Case of Exploding Mangoes, a satire on the events surrounding the death of General Zia the Pakistani dictator in the 1980s, and A Fraction of the Whole, which has been compared to Tom Wolfe’s chartbusters from the 1980s (which probably means large print and lots of pages).

Finally, there is Sir Salman Rushdie, weaving familiar themes and developing elaborate conceits into a fulgurant fantasy, The Enchantress of Florence, which will enrapture his legion of fans.

So, here is the Booker long-list:

Arvind Adiga (The White Tiger)

Gaynor Arnold (Girl In A Blue Dress)

Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)

Philip Hensher (Northern Clemency)

Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence)

John Berger (From A to X)

Linda Grant (The Clothes On their Back)

Tom Rob Smith (Child 44)

Mohammad Hanif (The Case of Exploding Mangoes)

Michelle de Krester (The Lost Dog)

Joseph O’Neill (The Netherland)

Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)

Amitav Ghosh (The Sea of Poppies)

Which amongst the above will be short-listed, if the short-list is of, say, five?

Here is my guess:

Linda Grant (The Clothes On their Back)

Amitav Ghosh (The Sea of Poppies)

Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence)

Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)

Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)


We shall know on 9th September.

Book of the Month: The Gathering (Anne Enright)

I must admit to a certain weakness in my character: I have become rather squeamish about reading Irish novels, especially the seriocomic family sagas, lest I am deluged with Irish-childhood clichés: the drunken father who is either insanely violent (very common) or smotheringly affectionate (less common) or both (though obviously not at the same time); over-worked, perennially pregnant, brow-beaten wife; a funny and witty family friend or an uncle, who—need I say it?—is also a drunkard and whom the wife blames bitterly for leading her man astray; too many children, some of whom are uncut diamonds while others are budding psychopaths; sexual abuse which goes either unnoticed or is connived at; one or more of the children die young (because there isn’t enough money to pay the doctor’s fee); perpetually gloomy weather with incessant rain; and various characters drinking endless cups of tea at very odd times. So, when The Gathering, a novel about a large, dysfunctional Irish family that has a skeleton or two in the cupboard, won the Man Booker Prize in 2007, I was not sure whether I would find the courage (or patience) to read it. My sense of wariness was further heightened when the author, Anne Enright, issued, on Radio 4’s Today programme, the following warning: ‘When people pick up a book they may want something that will cheer them up, in that case they shouldn’t really pick up my book . . . My book is equivalent of a Hollywood weepie.’ I bought the book, of course: because it had won the Booker, and I am a great sucker for this and other literary awards (it is a well known fact that winning the Booker guarantees a huge boost to the sell of the book; I wonder how many of those who buy the book actually read it; I have known a few who keep Midnight’s Children on their book-shelves because they think it will chisel others into believing that they are intellectuals).

The Gathering , for the most part, is a ‘dear diary’ sort of novel. Veronica Hegarty, a middle-aged, middle-class housewife with her oh-so-not-perfect marriage, is reminiscing about her clan following the death of one of her (many) siblings, Liam, after he kills himself, although—and we are left in no doubt about this—he is already lost to the family, drifting along aimlessly in life, from one bed-sit to another, committing chronic suicide of a kind (before he decides to put an abrupt coda to his existence by drowning in the sea) by drinking, day and night, any which kind of alcoholic beverage he can lay his hands on. The novel travels to and fro in time as Veronica tries to make sense of why her brother, to whom she was the closest when they were young, felt the need to fill his trouser-pockets with stones and walk into the Brighten Sea. While much of Veronica’s thinking happens in the present, the novel moves effortlessly back in time (without much warning and without a change in tense, which can be a trifle confusing at times) as Veronica tries to convince herself (somewhat tortuously, you can’t help thinking) that the seeds of Liams death were sown decades earlier when their grandmother, Ada, walked into a Dublin hotel and saw Lamb Nugent. The Gathering, then, is a family story of three generations: it is the story of Ada and Charlie—Veronica’s grandparents, and the shadow of their association with Lamb Nugent; it is the story of Veronica’s over-breeding parents who bring into the world a dozen children all except one of whom survive into adulthood; and it is the story of the third generation Hegarty children—of some of them, at any rate—and their complex relations with one another and their mother.

The narrator, Veronica, is obsessed with sex and penises. A chapter in the book opens with Veronica, travelling on a train, watching a man sitting beside her lifting his pelvis slightly and settling it back down; and she ‘can sense the blood pooling in his lap; the thick oblong of his penis moving down the leg of his suit.’ Later, when the man reaches for a newspaper, it is, she decides, to hide his lap. The sunlight coming in through the window is ‘sexual’ (!). Another chapter begins with ‘I saw a man with tertiary syphilis at mass once.’ Veronica's obsession with sex is Freudian, however. She is repulsed by it; it is not a pleasurable act for her. On the night of her dead brother’s wake Veronica and her husband have sex. This is how she sees it in retrospect: ‘ He [her husband, Tom] was getting back to the basics. . .telling me that my brother might be dead, but he was very much alive. Exercising his right. . .I lay there with one leg on either side of his dancing, country-boy hips, and I did not feel alive. I felt like a chicken when it is quartered.’ At another point she observes: ‘When I sleep with Tom … what he wants, what my husband has always wanted, and the thing I will not give him, is my annihilation. This is the way his desire runs. It runs close to hatred.’ It would be reasonable to conclude that the woman has enough inner demons to decorate hell. The tone of the narration (and, by extension, the ambiance of the novel) is sexual; however it is far from lilting, laced as it is with disgust and malignity.

The Gathering is novel of memories and reminiscences, and the tricks they can play with one’s mind. ‘The seeds of my brother’s death were sown many years ago’ starts a chapter. This is the central question that the narrator is wrestling with throughout the novel: what set her brother on the path of self-destruction, the path that ended in the Brighton sea. Veronica is convinced that it wasn’t the drink and the vicissitudes of life that killed him: it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother’s house when he was nine that killed him. And Veronica was an inadvertant witness to the act. Or was she, really? As early as the first chapter, the very first page and the very first line, infact, there are warnings: ‘I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event.’ Much later she wonders whether her memory is false. In his adolescence Liam begins to get into trouble with autorities because of his conduct problems. When he spends a night in the police cell for the first time, he returns with a dried patch of blood in his hair and a streak of red from cheek to neck. When he tells his sister that ‘they’ gave him a bit of a thump, she tells him not to be stupid. ‘I decided not to believe him if there was any “believing” to be done; he did not deserve to be believed,’ she recalls later. Now he is dead, Veronica is torturing herself over the point in time when she first betrayed her brother. The Gathering is a long lament suffused with guilt; and, as frequently happens in these situations, the guilt mutates into rage. Veronica Heggarty’s emotional response to her brother’s suicide is uniquely Catholic: she is devastated that she could not rescue Liam from the grave and mortal sin of suicide. But she is also furious with him. By killing himself, Liam has offended his family’s love for him and has selfishly and unjustly broken the ties of solidarity with his family. His behaviour is cotrary to the love of God. He has let down the family. She is unable to accept that Liam could have taken an informed decision that to end his life was better than continuing to suffer the pain of his existence. She is determined to find something, someone, whom she can blame; even if that means recovering memories that probably did not exist, and concoting elaborate stories of menage a trois involving her grandparents.

The Gathering fulfils almost all the Irish childhood clichés, yet, aided by Enright’s flawless, at times darkly humorous, prose, is sharp, tense, poweful and continually engrossing. The Gathering was given a very long 8 to 1 odds of winning the Booker by the British Bookmakers. It may have been a surprise winner, but deserving one. It is a work of complex tapistry.

Rushdie, Midnght's Children and The Booker

I might as well declare at the outset that Salman Rushdie is one of my favourite authors writing in English. I have read all of his full-length novels except the first (Grimus) and the most recent (The Enchantress of Florence). In my list of all-time favourite novels (written in Original English) there will definitely be two of Rushdie: The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children; and I will be tempted to add a third one (Moore’s Last Sigh).

Rushdie has the amazing capacity to arouse extreme passions. As John Sutherland remarked, he either rocks or he sucks. He irritates you the same way a driver gets under your skin by stealing a parking space from right under your nose, which fills you with murderous rage wholly disproportionate to the crime. And what are Rushdie's crimes? Different groups seem to hate him for different reasons. There are those, usually Muslim fundamentalists, who are convinced he is Islamophobic: he is subjected to vituperative attacks on a number of Islamic web-sites, I am told; many of the attackers, needless to say, have not actually read The Satanic Verses. Some consider him to be a shameless self-promotionist and aggrandiser. Rushdie’s cameo appearance in Bridget Jones’s Diary is often cited by them as an incontrovertible evidence that there is no turpitude he will not sink to so long as he stays in limelight. (It has to be said, though, that the man does not exactly shy away from publicity. It may even be argued that sometimes he goes actively in search of it. Take, for example, his recent claim that he now holds the record of signing maximum number of books in an hour. Driven by the need to make this fact public Rushdie wrote a letter to The Guardian, helpfully pointing out that he had broken the previously held record of the wine critic Malcolm Gluck. ‘His record is toast,’ Rushdie crowed in the letter. Gluck chose to see the humour in the situation—perhaps Salman was tongue in cheek all along—and compared it (Rushdie’s boasting) to men’s boastings about the size of their equipments (he was probably not far off the mark; I can’t see many women writers going for this type of record)). Then there are those who are pissed off with him for no reason other than he seems to have little difficulty in hooking up with young, glamorous women (although, the cockles of their hearts must have, no doubt, been warmed by the news that his third—or is it fourth? Most recent, anyway—wife, an ex-model, has left him). If some or more of you are wondering quite what any of this has got to do with Rushdie’s auctorial capabilities, let me advise you that there are those who don’t think much of him as a writer. A proportion of these have heard from a friend who happened to have overheard a conversation in a party that Rushdie is unreadable. Some have tried to read some of Rushdie’s books and struggled to go beyond the first fifty pages, which, of course, means that Rushdie is dull, tiresome, boring, and tedious. Rushdie, according to these individuals, who may or may not have achieved an elementary level of ability in reading, is over-hyped and writes tripe. He is a load of tosh, baloney and hokum. You will be excused if News of the World is not the first publication you reach for for literary fiction reviews, in which case let me inform you that one Carole Malone, a regular columnist in this British tabloid, thinks that Rushdie’s knighthood (awarded by the British Government) for the service to literature is farcical because she has yet to meet anyone, ‘me included’ (just so that there is no room for misunderstanding), who has managed to get through anything he has written. Ms Malone, it would be fair to conclude, is in the ‘Rushdie sucks’ camp. Finally, there are those who accept, grudgingly, that Rushdie used to be good, but point out, gleefully, that he is now past his sell-by-date; he is surviving on past reputation. Ground Beneath Her Feet and Fury are often given as examples of Rushdie’s declining prowess as a writer. (Martin Amis is another writer of Rushdie’s generation many seem to derive great pleasure in trashing).

It is difficult to say which amongst Rushdie’s ten full-length novels is his most famous. Many would plump for The Satanic Verses, which made Rushdie a household name in the non-English speaking world after Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme religious leader when the novel was published, issued a Fatwah sentencing Rushdie publicly to death as he (Khomeini) deemed The Satanic Verses to be blaspheming Islam. (One doubts very much whether Khomeini, who couldn’t read English, had actually read the novel, but he probably did not have to; he was after all God’s mouthpiece. Also, it wasn’t immediately apparent to many at the time quite how Khomeini was going to bring about Rushdie’s death unless he was depending on the Umah (which, I have it on reliable information, is an Arebic word for 'Brotherhood of Islam'); Rushdie wasn’t an Iranian citizen, and, after the Fatwah, one would have assumed that Tehran was probably not on the top of his list of holiday destinations.) The Satanic Verses is probably Rushdie’s commercially most successful book, although Rushdie, who had to go into hiding after the Fatwah for several years—the British government spent millions of pounds on his security—, would probably have settled for less copies of the novel selling if it meant he could live as a free man. It might be argued that The Satanic Verses made Rushdie not so much famous as infamous. It was Midnight’s Children—a hypermanic, clamorous tale, full of wit and slapstick, tracing the story of India’s independence and the first thirty post-independent years, through the memories of its drip-nosed, telepathic protagonist— that propelled him, overnight, to the cutting edge of the literary world, and won for him many a laurel.

Midnight’s Children was Salman Rushdie’s second novel. His first was Grimus which had sold barely nine hundred copies and had to be remaindered. Midnight’s Children changed all that. It made Rushdie into a celebrity. Years later he recalled: ‘Before [Midnight’s Children] my career as a writer was completely obscure. Overnight it wasn’t. I gained confidence.’ Still later he put it differently (and provocatively): ‘I walked into literary London as a stranger and ran off with a cheque, which feels OK.’ Rushdie began writing the novel in 1976. He felt a ‘sense of exhilaration’ as the voice of Saleem Sanai, the garrulous, witty narrator of what was to become Midnight’s Children ‘came over’ him. It was with this novel Rushdie, by his own admission, really became a writer ‘after a decade of false starts’. It took him three years to complete the novel and, to Rushdie’s delight, the two top names in the publishing word on either side of the Atlantic—Jonathan Cape in London and Alfred Knoff in New York—accepted the book. The publication got delayed for all sorts of reasons, and, when Rushdie requested to see some alternatives to the livid salmon-pink dust jacket of the book—he was, understandably concerned about the salmon / salman joke that would plague him for years—he was told that he could not as that would delay the publication of the book even further (one guesses the publishers have, since, become more receptive to Rushdie’s concerns).

Upon its publication, Midnight’s Children won the 1981 Booker prize, awarded to writers from Britain, Ireland, South Africa and the Commonwealth countries, ahead of some worthy competitors: Muriel Spark (Loitering with Intent), Doris Lessing (The Sirian Experiment), Ian McEwan (The Comfort of Strangers), and Molly Keane (The Good Behaviour), the last one making a literary comeback after decades of silence. In 1993, it was awarded the ‘Booker of Booker’ to celebrate twenty-five years of the literary prize the British fondly believe to be the most prestigious literary award in the world. And this year, in 2008, it won ‘The Best of the Booker’ award, a special prize awarded in commemoration of the forty years of the Booker Prize, now known as the ‘Man Booker Prize'.

The process of selection was different on the two occasions. In 1993 the winner was chosen by a committee of three, chaired by the late Malcolm Bradbury. Bradbury was also the chair of the committee that awarded the Booker to Midnight’s Children in 1981, although in his personal capacity he had voted against it at the time, so make of that what you will. The runner up, the committee had announced, was William Golding’s Rites of Passage, the 1980 Booker winner. In 2008, a shortlist of six was chosen by the novelist Victoria Glendinning, the broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and the professor of English (at University College London) John Mullan. The nominees were Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee), Siege of Krishnapur (J.G. Farrell), The Conversationist (Nadine Gordimer), Ghost Road (Pat Barker), Oscar and Lucinda (Peter Carey), and Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie). (The process of choosing the short-list of six was painful and disturbing, according to Glendinning; at least one book, personally significant to each one of the panel members, had to be axed, as the other two were not in sympathy. A particularly difficult category, apparently, was writers whom all the panel members admired unreservedly and who had won the Booker, ‘but for the wrong book’. The two novelists who came under this category were V.S. Naipaul (who won the 1971 Booker for In A Free State) and Margaret Atwood (who won the award in 2000 for The Blind Assassin)).

The winner of 'The Best of Booker' was chosen by public vote. Midnight’s Children won hands down with almost 40% voting for it. Disgrace was in second place.

In 1993, when he won the ‘Booker of Booker’, Rushdie was still living under the shadow of Khomeini's Fatwah. He was in hiding and was provided with tight security by the British government (at tax payers’ expense, of course). He attended the ceremony surrounded by bodyguards and police patrolling the streets with walki-talkies. Fifteen years down the line, circumstances were more felicitous, and the Fatwah had become a distant memory, although Rushdie could not receive the award in person as he was touring America, promoting his latest novel (which, it has been announced, is long-listed for the 2008 Booker. Should he win it—he probably won’t—he will become the third writer—after Coetzee and Carey—to win the award twice).

Midnight’s Children, Rushdie was to recall after many yeas, was an attempt by him, born and bred in Bombay (now Mumbai) to reclaim his Indian origins and heritage. He was particularly pleased that the book was very well received in the country of his birth (as much as English language books can be received; India is only a partially English speaking country, and it’s a lesser known fact in the West that authors writing in local languages, many of whom have never been translated into English, outsell the English-language books by a huge margin). The book was so widely pirated in India that he began receiving anonymous greeting cards and Thank You cards from the pirates. (It must have been painful for Rushdie when, six years later, India became the first (and probably the only) democratic and secular country to ban The Satanic Verses.)

A couple of years ago I attended a literary evening in which Rushdie was the main speaker (he was promoting Shalimar the Clown). In the ‘Question and Answers’ session, there were, inevitably, questions on Midnight’s Children. An Asian man commented that he had enjoyed the book thoroughly and found it to be hilarious in parts, however, at the end of it, he was left wondering what was the point of it all. There was a mild titter in the audience and Rushdie obviously felt the need to put the cheeky bloke in his place. He replied by saying that the very same question was asked by ‘a very pretty woman in a saree’ many years ago, in New Delhi. He then went on to caricature the Indian accent, replete with wild gesticulations (much to the merriment of the audience). Finally, he answered the question in a couple of sentences: he wrote the novel because he wanted to show that individual memories—of people who have lived through a particular epoch— can be at variance with the official version of history.

In a literary blog hosted by a broadsheet, there was a lively discussion after Midnight’s Children won the ‘Best of Bookers’. There were quite a few postings which stated that Midnight’s Children was not a worthy winner and compared it unfavourably to the novels of Marquez (which was strange seeing as Marquez, being a Latin American, non-English, writer, had never been short-listed for the Booker). Some others made the discovery that Midnight’s Children owed a lot to Grass’s Tin Drum. While the Tin Drum influence—and it is true that few seem to have noticed it—is probably there, in my view, Midnight’s Children is not at all derivative, and the influence—inspiration is the word I would prefer—detracts not a jot from its endlessly inventive resplendence. Let’s all hail Rushdie!

Book of the Month: The Sea (John Banville)

John Banville, the veteran Irish writer of more than a dozen novels, won the 2005 Man-Booker prize for The Sea. It was a surprise winner, piping the bookies’ favourites Arthur & George (Julian Barnes) and Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) to the post.

The Sea, at 260 odd pages, is not a long novel. Max Morden—Max, we are told, has changed his name, but the reason remains tantalizingly unexplained—an art historian, is the narrator. He has come to a seaside retreat, allegedly, to complete a book he is writing on the French painter Pirre Bonnard. He has been recently widowed, his wife, Anna, having lost her battle against cancer a few months earlier. But there is a reason why Max has chosen to come to this particular retreat, ‘the Cedars’. When he was growing up Max used to come to this seaside resort, which he somewhat mockingly refers to as Ballyless, every year, with his parents. The family was not rich enough to afford to rent ‘the Cedars’ in those days, and stayed in a chalet, instead. During one of his summer vacations Max becomes friendly with the children of the Grace family, a family several rungs above Max’s, who are renting ‘the Cedar’ that summer. Max even develops a crush, first, very briefly, on the mother, Connie, and then, on the daughter, Chloe. He spends a lot of time with Chloe, a haughty, mercurial girl who seems to take special pleasure in tormenting Max and Myles, the latter Chloe’s twin brother who is mute-or is he?; it is left, again, unexplained—and has got webbed feet. Max has a justifiable suspicion that his amative exchanges with Chloe have not gone unnoticed by Rose, the children’s nineteen-year old governess.

The narrative progresses at three levels, each one relating to different stages in Max’s life: the reminiscence of the fateful summer Max spent all those years ago in ‘Ballyless’ with the Graces; reminiscence of Anna’s illness and the events surrounding it; and the present—here we are introduced to an interesting secondary character, Colonel Blunden, who is so ‘old world colonelish’ in everything he does and says that Max can’t help wondering if he, the colonel, is not an impostor.

Banville, a former literary editor of Irish Times, is prodigiously gifted with words. He seems incapable of writing anything less than glistening. The prose, a trademark of all Banville novels is hypnotic. It is so lyrical at times that it is like reading a poem, be it description of nature or Max philosophising on the human condition. This is another thing about Banville: he is not just a novelist; he is also a philosopher. In The Sea, via its narrator, Banville offers interesting comments, not necessarily insights, on the feelings of dislocation and strangeness that are, surely, experienced by all sentient humans at some or the other time in their existence.

The Sea is a finely paced novel. Banville is a master of complex patterns, of which the reader remains aware throughout, notwithstanding the digressive meditations. The narrative, thus, has to it a delightfully meandering sense. Yet, the reader is acutely aware of a sense of foreboding. You know it is not going to end well; there is a tragedy lurking somewhere, but you can’t really put your finger on it. You are sucked in by the mesmerizing quality of the narration. The end, when it finally arrives with its fiendish twist, leaves you gasping with admiration.

Banville is frequently described as a ‘writer’s writer’, and compared to Nabakov in respect of his prose. He also, perhaps understandingly, invites the criticism of being self-consciously stylistic and sententious. If epithets such as ‘velutinous’, ‘horrent’, cinereal’, and ‘caduceus’—I had to look up the meanings of all these words as also the erudite pun on the name of Anna’s physician—irritate you, he is probably not the writer for you. The Sea, I should add, though, is not just about linguistic inventiveness. Underneath the sizzle there is solid substance. It is a worthy Booker winner.

A Literary Evening

The auditorium was half full; or half-empty, depending on how one chooses to look at things. At the stroke of seven the guest speaker, accompanied by the organizer of the literary evening, arrived. The organizer, a middle-aged man with white hair and, in stark contrast, black bushy eyebrows, which gave him a vaguely thuggish look, like that of a Latin American drug baron, began mumbling introductory words, firstly about himself and what he got up to at university, and then about the guest speaker, whose name did not ring an immediate bell—I really should have done my homework, should have ‘googled’ her before turning up for the event. We were told that she was born in Poland, spent early childhood in France, was raised subsequently in Canada, and now lived in London. I was surprised to hear that she had written ten novels; I did not remember coming across any of her books while browsing in high-street bookshops, which I do frequently. The introduction continued, the organizer obviously being filled with the desire to fill the audience in about more examples of the meritoriousness of this multi-faceted woman: she had written several works of non-fiction including a family memoir which had won prestigious commonwealth awards; she had edited anthologies; she was at one time the deputy director of an esteemed art institute and at another the deputy-president of an equally, if not more, esteemed one; she had written extensively for radio and television. And, many years ago, she had co-authored a book on case-studies of Sigmund Freud’s female patients. This had a semi-familiar ring. The organizer concluded his introduction on the note that she was there that evening to read out excerpts from her latest book, a work of non-fiction, on history of mental illness and those who think they can treat it (doctors), concentrating on women, from the 19th century to the present. Throughout this long introduction the guest, a slim, wiry woman with angular features, who looked to be in her early fifties (but who, I subsequently found out, was in her sixties), sat demurely, looking at the organizer’s feet or calves, one of which, as it happened, he scratched vigorously throughout his talk. (Chronic eczema, perhaps? Or psoriasis? Or some other itchy skin condition? Or an allergy to the socks he was wearing (but why, in that case, only one, Watson) ? Or just a nervous tick?) At one stage he paused, leaned forward a bit, opened his mouth a fraction, and I was sure a burp was going to follow; but he did not, and it did not.

The organizer then proceeded to interview the author (or should I say authoress?), essentially going over the same points he had touched upon in his introduction. She let it be known (very modestly) that she was a polyglot, and nodded with an apologetic smile when the drug baron accused her of being a polyhistor. She couldn’t help being one, you see, afflicted as she was with high intelligence and executability. At one stage during the interview she let it slip (very modestly) that she read Proust, all six volumes, when she was an adolescent, and admitted, with all humility, that she used to pronounce his name wrongly. We also learned that she was a feminist (which perhaps explained why she had chosen to concentrate on women in her book on mental illness). In this context the speaker gave a short discourse, no doubt out of a sense of duty to enlighten the audience, who, in all probability, had not read the book she was about to read from, on the historical development of the concept of mental illness. Freud, she informed the audience, was absolutely crucial to the understanding of mental afflictions; the ‘talking cure’ addressed the core of the problems far better than the manipulation of brain chemicals. She recounted, having the decency to look ill at ease, how an acquaintance of her complimented her on the book which was ‘richly researched’, yet so easy to understand. The organizer, also looking ill at ease—perhaps not being accustomed to remain quiet for more than five consecutive minutes—, interjected by observing the book read like a thriller. The guest looked coyly at the audience and said that was her ‘problem’.

Finally the guest speaker read out an excerpt from her book, a story of a Scottish woman from the 19th century—the woman apparently did exist, although the author / authoress had changed her, the woman’s, name to preserve her privacy, although she, the woman, was hardly going to be embarrassed by the revelations seeing as she was dead for nearly hundred years. I am afraid my mind drifted a bit at this stage, and only the snippets of narration made an impact from time to time. The author / authoress concluded that the kind of language used by this woman, while describing her mental anguish in a letter she wrote to the superintendent of the local Bedlam with a request to be committed, proved the universality of Sigmund Freud’s theories; because she, the author, was sure that she, the Scottish mad-woman, had never been acquainted with Freud’s theories. At this stage the drug baron who probably (like me) had drifted off to sleep came back to life and informed the audience that there were individual chapters in the book devoted to famous neurotics and psychotics linked to literature and rattled out the predictable list: Virginia (yawn) wolf, Zelda (yawn) Fitzgerald, and Sylvia (yawn yawn) Plath.

The drug baron turned to the audience and asked, reluctantly, whether anyone had questions for the guest. There were a few hands raised. A distinguished looking man, probably a retired doctor, asked the guest, in an incredibly posh tone, how ‘on earth’ she managed to get hold of the confidential medical records. Either he had missed the point of the talk completely or was insinuating that the Scottish mad-woman was a figment of the author / authoress’s imagination. A trichomally challenged man in his forties—or may be he looked older because of absence of hair—asked the speaker why it was that Freud, more than any other personality from the history of the hundred and fifty years of Psychiatry and Psychology appealed more to the literati. In a self-effacing manner rivalling that of the speaker and sounding apologetic, he mentioned names of someone called Krepelin and his colleague, Alzheimer, who, he informed the audience, espoused the Medical branch of Psychiatry, which was, at the very least, as influential as Freud’s theories, around the same time and not very far from where Freud was spreading his religion. Looking around—an unfortunate move on his part because the long strand of hair he had trained across his bald top (from side to back) that glistened with sweat under the ceiling lights slipped and hung over his ear all the way down to the shoulder, making him appear slightly ridiculous—he hazarded a guess that almost everyone in the audience would have heard of Alzheimer’s dementia, but how many of them, he demanded to know, knew about Alzheimer the man; how many books were written on Alzheimer and Krepelin? The drug baron nodded and confirmed that Freud indeed was popular—“No doubt about it”—and looked expectantly at the speaker who decided that the most effective way of responding to this long query was to launch into an equally long and circuitous reply strewn liberally with clichés: Freud ‘touched’ the inner life; he provided the only coherent theory to explain the long sought after questions the humanity had asked itself over millennia about the causes of human misery and suffering etcetera etcetera. The baldy did not look convinced but decided—wisely, in my view—it was getting late—, to keep his counsel. So that’s it then. That’s why Freud remains popular amongst the chattering classes: he provided answers to the questions that had remained unanswered since the dawn of humanity. Not because it allows one to be prurient and feel intellectual at the same time.

The allotted hour came to an end. The Drug Baron ‘warmly’ invited the audience to a nearby bookshop where the author would be available to ‘personally sign’ (is there any other way?) copies of her books. Wine and orange juice would be served. I decided to give the book-signing a miss. I did not have an overwhelming desire to drink canned Tesco juice and cheap wine, and risk a stomach-upset. As I was exiting, I heard raised voices from my left in the crowd. A big paunchy man wearing a crumpled jacket and, I noticed, walking next to the baldy, was talking either to himself (not very likely; he was talking loudly) or to the baldy (possible, but the baldy gave no indication that he was listening) or to no one in particular (again, not very likely; the volume of his voice suggested that it was for the benefit of those around him) or to those in the throng (likely). ‘Total bollocks!’ he shouted. ‘Never heard such rubbish in my life.’ This seemed to have little effect; no one from the throng responded or showed in any way that they concurred with the fatty’s analysis. Feeling the need to make more impact, he yelled, ‘My wife is an organic psychiatrist; I am not going to tolerate this.’ It was not immediately apparent to me (and probably not to those who were listening to the rant) what he meant by ‘organic' psychiatrist. I had heard of ‘organic vegetables’ and ‘organic chickens’. Surely, he did not mean that his wife was unadulterated by fertilizers or pesticides or any other synthetic chemicals. I thought about asking him what exactly was he trying to convey about the properties of his psychiatrist wife when he described her as organic, but thought against it. The fat man was looking around as though he would like nothing better than to wring a neck and wouldn't be too choosy about which neck his fingers wound around, and it was not as important as that, anyway. I came out of the building and took a deep breath of the cold fresh air.

Book of the Month: A Hot Country (Shiva Naipaul)

Shiva Naipaul died in 1985, when he was only forty. If he is remembered at all these days, it is as the younger brother of Sir V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel Laureate. He was one of the most accomplished writers of his time. His first novel, Fireflies, was published, when he was twenty five, to great acclaim, and won a number of awards. The second, Chip-Chip Gatherers, followed three years later, and was very well received critically. Martin Amis wrote that it was exhilrating to be alive at the same time as someone who could write like Shiva Naipaul. There then followed a long silence of seven years which Paul Theroux (in his reproachful, rancourous memoir, Sir Vidia's Shadow) attributed to the Writer's Block. This was not strictly true, as Naipaul, during this period wrote the brilliant travelogue, North of South, ; Black and White , the grim story of the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana; as well as a collection of short stories. Then came, in 1980, A Hot Country.

Shiva Naipaul once said in an interview that he regarded his fiction and non-fiction work as one body of work as his non-fiction research yielded experiences and information that he developed into novels. One can easily see the common motif betwwen North of South and A Hot Country, Naipaul’s last and the shortest novel to be published in his life) set in the fictional, politically volatile country of Cuyama, apparently a disguised version of Guyana.

The novel tells the story of the crumbling marriage of Aubrey St Piers and his wife Dina as the country is descending into a chaos around them and is heading towards totalitarianism. The author tackles serious themes such as the decline and corruptions afflicting many African countries post-colonialism, and the tensions between different communities and races in these countries, originally deracinated by the colonial masters and who have been co-existing harbouring deep suspicions and prejudices against each other for decades. The author’s take on the situation is relentlessly pessimistic (not unlike that of V.S. Naipaul in his African novel A Bend In The River), which, by the time you finish the novel, fills you with gloom. It has to be said, though, that in light of what is going on in many of these countries, Naipaul’s novel, written more than two decades ago, seems very prophetic. The story of the protagonists and the supporting characters take a subservient position to these grander themes that are clearly very close to Naipaul’s heart; indeed some of the charaters such as the English journalist Alex seem to have been introduced only so as to allow the author to make the point that what goes on in these colonies hold very little interest for their ex-masters, although they have, from the historical perspective, sowed the seeds of the discord.

What makes this novel a joy to read is Naipaul’s language which is precise, elegant, acutely observant and brilliantly evocative. This is a literary book which strives to make serious points, and offers (as the author has done in his other non-fiction work) explanations which may be frowned upon by the politically correct.

In Sir Vidia's Shadow, Paul Theroux dismissed Shiva Naipaul as a poseur who aped his much more gifted elder brother. There are undoubtedly many similarities between Shiva Naipaul’s thematic concerns and attitudes, as reflected in his work of fiction and non-fiction, and those of V.S. Naipaul: the social and political conditions in the African third world countries, especially the former colonies. Both tend to take a rather stark view of life (V.S. Naipaul more so in his later works) and are not overly indulgent towards mediocrity. Neither of them is shy of telling unpalatable truths, and, unsurprisingly, not everyone likes what they write.

A Hot Country is a fine novel. And when one considers it with the rest of Shiva Naipaul's (slim but very impressive) oeuvre, it is impossible not to wonder how he would have developed had he lived longer.