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Rushdie on Man Booker Prize list

Hasan Suroor

The fiction in which a U.S. diplomat is killed by a Kashmiri Muslim terrorist is likely to cause controversy

LONDON: Salman Rushdie, twice-winner of the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary honour, has been longlisted again this year for his forthcoming novel, Shalimar the Clown. The book has been described as a story of "love and revenge" set in Kashmir.

Critics said the fiction in which a U.S. diplomat is killed by a Kashmiri Muslim terrorist — a murder of passion — was likely to cause controversy.

The book is to be published next month but an unauthorised review is already reported to have appeared in America, causing ripples in literary circles.

Rushdie, who spent several years in hiding under police protection after the Iranian Government issued a fatwa against him following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, won the "Booker of Bookers" in 1993 for Midnight's Children, regarded as his most important book to date.

The longlist, for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize, is dripping with heavyweights, including at least three others who have won it before: Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro. Zadie Smith, who created a sensation with her debut novel White Teeth but missed a Booker, is also on the list for her third novel On Beauty, a "social comedy'' built around two families — an African and white and both politically on different planets.

There are only three new writers on the 17-strong longlist — Harry Thompson for his highly-acclaimed This Thing of Darkness, a historical take on Charles Darwin; Tash Aw for The Harmony Silk Factory and Marina Lewycka for The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, a comic tale about an octogenarian widowed Ukrainian's bid to marry a woman half his age.

"This has been an exceptional year and, in the judges' opinion, may rank as one of the strongest ever," said John Sutherland, chairman of the jury.

A shortlist will be announced next month and the winner in October.

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