The Booker longlist was announced yesterday. Going over the list, I noted that it didn’t seem very multi-cultural. One of the interesting things about the Booker is that any author from the Commonwealth of Nations or from Ireland is eligible. This means that any of 54 countries might send a writer to Booker glory. This year, however, the judging committee is keeping things geographically constrained, with only three countries represented among the 13 finalists:
- England, 9 (Byatt, Foulds, Harvey, Lever, Mantel, Hall, Mawer, Scudamore, Waters)
- Ireland, 3 (O’Loughlin, Toibin, Trevor)
- South Africa, 1 (Coetzee)
Moving on to less serious matters, the Booker betting odds are now out (and subject to change as punters put their money on the line). The bookmakers like Toibin and Waters to win, but James Lever is putting in an impressive showing with his mock memoir of a chimp.
- 4/1 Colm Toibin – Brooklyn
- 4/1 Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger
- 5/1 Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall
- 6/1 J.M. Coetzee – Summertime
- 8/1 James Lever – Me Cheeta
- 10/1 A.S. Byatt – The Children’s Book
- 12/1 William Trevor – Love and Summer
- 14/1 Ed O’Loughlin – Not Untrue and Not Unkind
- 14/1 Simon Mawer – The Glass Room
- 16/1 James Scudamore – Heliopolis
- 16/1 Adam Foulds – The Quickening Maze
- 16/1 Sarah Hall – How to Paint a Dead Man
- 16/1 Samantha Harvey – The Wilderness
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at 4:08 pm on July 29, 2009
Should we really be that surprised? The Booker has been awarded forty-five times since 1969, and more than half (twenty-four) have gone to British citizens. Only a handful of other countries have been represented in the Booker (India, Ireland, Australia, and Canada being the most successful) – although Vanuatu, Botswana, and Belize are all technically eligible, writers from most countries in the Commonwealth never even sniff the longlist, it seems.