The Man Booker prize has strong years and weak years. There have been ones when the judges have succeeded in identifying what is most interesting in English-language fiction and others when the task has been comprehensively flunked. With Robert Macfarlane as chairman, 2013 promises to be very good; 2011, which was in fact a strong year for fiction, was widely agreed to be a catastrophe; 2012, while an improvement, was disappointing in that it reflected the conventional tastes of academics.
This year’s longlist shows a confident take on the direction of the English-language novel. There are certainly some sad omissions, including splendid novels by Evie Wyld and Michael Arditti. It must be said, too, that the Booker often prefers a moderately able tackling of a big theme over an exquisitely polished and insightful domestic study. Nevertheless, this is an ambitious and thoughtful longlist and deserves extensive investigation.
One interesting feature is the judges’ willingness to stretch the qualification for the prize as far as possible. In theory, American writers are not eligible. In practice, it is easier for an American with some usefully maintained secondary passport to be considered than for an Indian national.
On this longlist, I think Jhumpa Lahiri, Noviolet Bulawayo, Ruth Ozeki and Colum McCann are customarily resident in the US at the very least. How useful the manipulation of national and cultural identity can be for a novelist is shown by the interesting case of Ozeki. She does not bear her father’s surname, Lounsbury, or her husband’s, Kellhammer. Her novels have strong Japanese themes, and readers should not, apparently, be asked to wonder what a Ruth Lounsbury is doing writing about Japan.
No Bengali would think of Jhumpa Lahiri as anything but an American novelist, either, and it seems now comic to give Elizabeth Tshele, rechristened Noviolet Bulawayo, a prize for African writers when she has lived and worked in the US for many years.
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