So the Man Booker Prize goes to another American writer this year: George Saunders. Last year it was Paul Beatty. Tow Americans in a row.
No doubt the Man Booker is now US-cenrtic. And there will be less and less chance for any non-American writer to get it now. Forget the days when Arundhati Roy, then a first-time author based in India, won it.
But George is a brilliant short-story writer. And he treats writing very seriously. He has a humanitarian world-view, and pens his characters with insight and empathy. But what I like about him is his thoughts about fiction writing. Try to read any of his interviews.
Lincoln in the Bardo is his first novel. I ought to be interested in it, but it deals with death and has a narrative in which more than one hundred ghosts deliver their insight and wisdom around it. It seems so weird to me, and frankly, I can't bring myself to like it. I don't think I'll ever read it.
But our Booker judges liked it. May be ghosts are a new thing after the vampire that has ruled the American publishing scene for far too long.
No doubt the Man Booker is now US-cenrtic. And there will be less and less chance for any non-American writer to get it now. Forget the days when Arundhati Roy, then a first-time author based in India, won it.
But George is a brilliant short-story writer. And he treats writing very seriously. He has a humanitarian world-view, and pens his characters with insight and empathy. But what I like about him is his thoughts about fiction writing. Try to read any of his interviews.
Lincoln in the Bardo is his first novel. I ought to be interested in it, but it deals with death and has a narrative in which more than one hundred ghosts deliver their insight and wisdom around it. It seems so weird to me, and frankly, I can't bring myself to like it. I don't think I'll ever read it.
But our Booker judges liked it. May be ghosts are a new thing after the vampire that has ruled the American publishing scene for far too long.
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