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PREVIEW

But — and it is a cruel thing to say — it could turn out to be a disappointing evening both for Indra Sinha (India) and Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan). I will be very surprised if either of them wins — I’ll explain in a moment why — but if one of them is able to pull it off, it will be an unprecedented second consecutive win for a writer from the Indian subcontinent, Kiran Desai having won it last year.

That these two should have been shortlisted at all is intriguing, especially when a better book (Nikita Lalwani’s debut novel Gifted) was not. Sinha’s self-consciously written Animal’s People, about the Bhopal gas tragedy, as well as Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, about a young and well-heeled U.S.-based Pakistani falling out of love with America after 9/11, are over-rated.

I am not familiar with Sinha’s previous work, but I became a huge fan of Hamid’s after reading his first novel Moth Smoke but, like most second novels, his second is a let-down. It is a clever book. He writes sparse, controlled prose; and chooses an interesting narrative device: a bearded Pakistani collaring an American stranger in a Lahore café and forcing him to listen to his story of how his American dream turned sour — with both men wary of each other, symbolising the mutual suspicion and tension between America and the Muslim world.

But, fatally for the novel, Hamid has nothing to say, and his story of a young successful Muslim becoming a “reluctant fundamentalist” because of the post-9/11 climate in America is shamelessly contrived. And, in the end, it comes across as just one more addition to the post-9/11 literary-marketing boom in the West. Indeed, Hamid has said in an interview that he first wrote the book before 9/11 but his literary agent wasn’t impressed. Then 9/11 happened and he rewrote the manuscript, using the post-9/11 Islamophobia in America to stand up the story of a Pakistan professional becoming disillusioned with the country.

But, sorry mate, it doesn’t work.

Sinha’s Animal’s People, with its strong language (and that’s putting it very mildly), is too annoyingly in-your-face for my taste. It can be argued that a victim of a man-made disaster like the Bhopal gas tragedy is expected to be — indeed entitled — to be angry. But there is a difference between an abusive rant and literary exploration of suffering and anger. In one of his most famous stories on Partition, Sadat Hassan Manto had his lead character rave and rant but it worked, to a degree, because the character was shown to be mad. Some of the best examples of Holocaust literature are those that are deeply reflective. Sinha is conscious of the reaction to the “foulness” of his narrator’s language, as he wrote in New Statesman, as indeed of the fact that his novel is the “rank outsider to win the prize”.

But awards are funny things and with a theme like the Bhopal gas tragedy Animal’s People does tick one important box. So who knows the Booker judges might just fall for it?

This year’s shortlist is notably thin both literally (most of the books are under 300 pages, some even under 200) and figuratively. It is dominated by relatively unknown writers, with the exception of Ian McEwan, a previous Booker winner, and New Zealand’s Lloyd Jones who won this year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Overall Best Book for the same novel which is competing for Booker. Others include British writer Nicola Barker and Irish novelist Anne Enright besides, of course, the “rivals” from India and Pakistan.

Judges have defended the list, variously describing it as “diverse” and “exciting”. Howard Davies, chair of the judges, said that picking up six writers from an “exciting longlist” was a “tough challenge”. The six were chosen after a “passionate and careful consideration”, he said, echoing what judges say every year.

A spokesman for Man Booker was more forthright, suggesting that it was a deliberate decision to cram the list with young and new writers. “One of the joys of this prize is identifying talent for the future. It is a strong list and if we had six well-known names every year we would be criticised for not encouraging new talent,” he said.

Discovering new talent is, no doubt, a noble idea but if that, indeed, is the plan then, already, it seems set to come unstuck judging from the way bets are being placed on McEwan’s novella On Chesil Beach, which explores the pre-nuptial anxieties of a young couple, and Jones’s Mister Pip, about the lives of people on a war-ravaged island. The buzz is that it is a toss-up between these and others can go home.

Undoubtedly, McEwan is a hugely talented writer and I admired his previous works, especially Amsterdam and Atonement, but On Chesil Beach is not a prize-winning effort. My vote is for Mister Pip for the way Jones uses one of English language’s most famous 19th century novels — Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations — to explore issues like colonialism, white supremacy, clash of cultures and, indeed, the power of literature.

While critics and the bookies are putting their money on these two, Booker judges have a reputation for springing nasty surprises. So, a dark horse emerging as the winner is still very much a possibility.

For a prize which has been built on hype and is notoriously prone to controversies, it has attracted surprisingly little attention this year. The coveted Booker tag, which once guaranteed sales of shortlisted titles, seems to have lost its magic quality as most of the books on this year’s list are struggling to sell, reflecting a distinct lack of enthusiasm — the only point of interest being Pakistan’s debut.

Indian writers or those of Indian origin have been a regular feature of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1968 and at least five —Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Kiran Desai — have won it (Bangladesh nearly made it in 2003 with Monica Ali’s Brick Lane) but this is the first time that a Pakistani novelist is a contender. Yet even this little novelty has failed to spark interest outside the Asian diaspora.

So, has Booker lost its pull? Or is it just prize fatigue brought on by an overdose of literary awards?

Indra Sinha — Animal’s People

Mohsin Hamid — The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Lloyd Jones — Mister Pip

Ian McEwan — On Chesil Beach

Nicola Barker — Darkmans

Anne Enright — The Gathering

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