The Hindu : Front Page : Gay-theme novel bags Booker

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Thursday, Oct 21, 2004

Front Page

Front Page

Gay-theme novel bags Booker

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, OCT. 20. A novel about gay sex and high political jinx set in Thatcherite Britain has won this year's £50,000 Man Booker Prize. It beat five other contenders on what was arguably one of the most unremarkable Booker shortlists in many years.

Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, set in the house of a fictional Conservative MP in the heyday of Margaret Thatcher, was a bitterly contested last-minute choice. The chairman of the jury, Chris Smith, a former Culture Secretary, himself openly gay, admitted that it was an "incredibly difficult and close decision.'' But he insisted that he did not have to exercise his casting vote. He sought to play down the "gay'' element in the book, saying it was chosen on its literary merit. "The fact [that] it was a gay novel did not figure at all in the discussions... This is a novel that happens to be about gay sex and gay relationships,'' Mr. Smith said. He described it as "exciting and brilliantly-written.''

Critics noted that it was the first time that a novel with an overtly gay theme had won Britain's most significant literary prize. "That it [gay theme] can be considered as a perfectly valid part of contemporary fiction without regarding that as unique shows how much times have changed,'' Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Hollinghurst, 50, a former Oxford University academic and deputy editor of The Times Literary Supplement, said he was "exhilarated.'' He said: "I know it's a decision I shall be grateful for — for the rest of my life. How they reached it, I've no idea and I'm conscious how easily it could have gone to one of the other authors.''

About his choice of the Thatcherite 1980s as the backdrop, he said: "It was a period of such extraordinary change and I remember the feeling of deep discomfort at living through it.''

The story

The main protagonist of the novel is a young gay postgraduate student who comes down from Oxford to live in the house of a Tory MP in London and gets involved in a series of affairs that change his life. The novel is apparently inspired by the works of Henry James — and indeed its hero is a Henry James scholar.

Mr. Hollinghurst has won several literary awards and was in 1993 named by Granta magazine as one of the best young British novelists. His two previous novels are The Swimming Pool and The Folding Star. The two novels on the shortlist which came close to beating his own were David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and Colm Toibin's The Master.

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