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The prize has come in for justified criticism, its rules are imperfect. But this year’s authors are an exciting prospect
It is easy to deride awards, especially if you haven’t won one. And good fun too. Edward St Aubyn, snubbed by Booker judges in 2006 for the finale to his Patrick Melrose series, At Last, took revenge with the 2014 satire Lost for Words. That novel depicted clownish judges deciding which book, from a terrible shortlist, should win a thinly veiled version of the Booker.
This week’s decision by Booker judges to shortlist The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s much-anticipated sequel to her 1985 feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, might seem similarly worthy of derision. The book hasn’t even been published yet. Apart from 800 copies leaked to Amazon in the US, what takes place between its covers will be kept from most readers until its global release on 10 September – her publishers having broken with convention by not bringing the publication date forward once the novel was known to be in the running. Atwood, shortlisted for the Booker six times and winner with The Blind Assassin in 2000, is one of the most feted living novelists, so hardly needs the award’s imprimatur or £50,000 prize money. Continue reading...