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Man Booker Prize longlist 2018: reaction

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There was a time not so many years ago that the announcement of the long list for the Man Booker Prize would have me heading straight to the library.

How things change. I’m still interested in the prize but not to the same extent.  It’s not the fact that the rules changed to allow American authors but that it meant there were fewer authors from other countries on the list. It became less international.

This year I forgot that today would see the long list for the 2018 prize released. It was only that I happened to be in a bookshop and overheard a customer asking the shop owner for his reactions to the list, that my memory was jogged.

There are a few positives about this year’s list:

Despite that reflection of diversity I’m sad to see that the international flavour of the prize has diminished even further.  In a nutshell we have a list made up of:

• Two Canadian authors

• Six authors from the UK

• Two writers from Ireland

• Three writers representing the USA

So yet another year when there is not a single author from Oceania on the list. Strange that Peter Carey, a previous winner, didn’t make it this year.

No author from the Indian sub continent. Last year at least we had one Indian and two UK/Pakistan writers on the list.

But once again no author from any African country.

This is such a disappointing trend. One of the things I loved about the Booker lists in the past was the international flavour because it introduced me to new authors from parts of the world whose literature was generally an unknown quantity to me. The Man Booker International Prize doesn’t entirely fill the gap because that is only for fiction translated into English, so many Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans are not eligible.

Do I have any predictions for this year’s ultimate winner? Short answer is no, I haven’t a clue because I’ve not read any of these books. I do have Bauer’s novel on hold at the library because I’ve enjoyed her previous novels but there is a long waiting list. As good as it’s likely to be, I don’t see it winning purely because the Booker judges would be afraid of being labelled “popularist” if they dared to choose a crime novel. I’d be happy for Donal Ryan to win because I thoroughly enjoyed The Spinning Heart and Michael Ondaatje’s previous winner The English Patient is one of my top 3 Booker favourites across all the years. Is it likely they would choose him for their 50th anniversary. If they did it would be a remarkable feat since he was only recently announced as the winner of the Golden Booker prize. Stranger things have happened with the Booker prize however.

The Man Booker Longlist 2018

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