booklit

The longlist for the 2010 Independent Foreign Ficton Prize has been announced, and it’s quite a small press friendly affair. As usual, titles under consideration were those translated works (from a living author) published in the prior year within the UK, and the prize money gets split equally between author and translator. Here’s the longlist:

The Coronation, Boris Akunin (Russian, trans: Andrew Bromfield) [Weidenfeld & Nicolson]

To Music, Ketil Bjørnstad (Norwegian, trans: Deborah Dawkin & Erik Skuggevik) [Maia Press]

The Madman of Freedom Square, Hassan Blasim (Arabic, trans: Jonathan Wright) [Comma Press]

Brodeck’s Report, Philippe Claudel (French, trans: John Cullen) [MacLehose Press]

The Blind Side Of The Heart, Julia Franck (German, trans: Anthea Bell) [Harvill Secker]

Fists, Pietro Grossi (Italian, trans: Howard Curtis) [Pushkin Press]

Yalo, Elias Khoury (Arabic, trans: Humphrey Davies) [MacLehose Press]

The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell (French, trans: Charlotte Mandell) [Chatto & Windus]

Broken Glass, Alain Mabanckou (French, trans: Helen Stevenson) [Serpent’s Tail]

Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell, Javier Marías (Spanish, trans: Margaret Julla Costa) [Chatto & Windus]

The Housekeeper And The Professor, Yoko Ogawa (Japanese, trans: Stephen Snyder) [Harvill Secker]

Thursday Night Widows, Claudia Piñeiro (Spanish, trans: Miranda France) [Bitter Lemon Press]

Chowringhee, Sankar (Bengali, trans: Arunava Sinha) [Atlantic]

The Dark Side of Love, Rafik Schami (German, trans: Anthea Bell) [Arabia Books]

Sunset Oasis, Bahaa Taher (Arabic, trans: Humphrey Davies) [Sceptre]

The shortlist will be announced some time in April. I have a number of these books on my shelves and would like to think I can get around to reading a few of them but, given my prolongued reader’s block, I’m not holding out much hope.

With the impact of recognising Herta Müller as the 2009 Nobel laureate in literature slightly dampened by rising expectations that she would be the recipient I find myself still happy, like last year, that it has went to a writer I have no experience of reading. When this happens, it’s always a welcome recommendation from the Swedish Academy, like J.M.G. Le Clézio last year, who I have since read and enjoyed. I now look forward to reading one of Müller’s works in the near future.

The annoying thing about the Nobel is not the prize itself, but the predictable reactions that follow. If it’s not demonstrating exasperation over how unknown the writer is (see Another obscure Nobel Prize literature winner. Sigh!) it’s calls of the prize being Eurocentric because an American hasn’t won it for a number of years, such as this in the Washington Post:

The latest Nobel literature selection has revived chatter about whether the Nobel Committee favors European writers — even the most obscure ones — over Americans. Mueller, an ethnic German born in Romania, is the third European in a row to win the $1.4 million prize. It has been 16 years since an American won it (1993, Toni Morrison).

Sixteen years, eh? It’s been ninety-six years since an Indian won it and an additional two on top of that since a Belgian was recognised. And, still, there’s plenty of countries that have never produced a laureate. What so many seem to miss is that it’s not a national award but an individual one, as per the will of Alfred Nobel:

It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.”

The American media may crow about how the prize is Eurocentric, especially fired up by then Permanent Secretaty Horace Engdahl’s comments in 2008 about how America is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the centre of the literary world but the big difference is that while America is a single country, Europe consists of fifty separate nations, each with their own history, politics, and culture. If the Academy recognised a writer from France one year it would still be a far cry from awarding a Hungarian, a Finn, or a Georgian the following year. They may all be European, but the worlds they inhabit will be completely different.

Instead of taking no American writer being recognised in recent years amost as a personal insult, the positives are still that, rather than having a reason to cheer on the nation’s favourite sons and daughters, there’s the possibility of a new writer to discover. Surely there’s been movement since that described by the first American laureate, Sinclair Lewis, in his 1930 Nobel lecture, The American Fear of Literature?

…in America most of us - not readers alone but even writers - are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues.

Perhaps that’s why Adam Kirsh, writing in Slate, made this daft comment last year:

The Nobel committee has no clue about American literature. America should respond not by imploring the committee for a fairer hearing but by seceding, once and for all, from the sham that the Nobel Prize for literature has become.

The ignorance surrounding the Nobel Prize in Literature is something that becomes tiring after a while. What are we to think, for example, of a group that overlooked the likes of Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, and so on? Nothing, I’d say. Authors live and die and the Academy can’t predict that. It may be that Nabokov was in with a shout of winning the Nobel in 1977 but went and disqualified himself by dying in July that year. It may not be. There’s no point second guessing the normally secretive Swedish Academy. Just enjoy their recommendations. Or not. But let’s not bring nationality into it. It goes against the idea of the prize.

The longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2009 has been announced.

The sixteen titles are:

• My Father’s Wives, José Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn from the Portuguese (Arcadia Books)
• The Director, Alexander Ahndoril, translated by Sarah Death from the Swedish (Portobello Books)
• Voice Over, Céline Curiol, translated by Sam Richard from the French (Faber)
• The White King, György Dragomán, translated by Paul Olchvary from the Hungarian (Doubleday)
• Night Work, Thomas Glavinic translated by John Brownjohn from the German (Canongate)
• Beijing Coma, Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew from the Chinese (Chatto & Windus)
• The Siege, Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos from the French of Jusuf Vrioni (Canongate)
• Homesick, Eshkol Nevo, translated by Sondra Silverston from the Hebrew (Chatto & Windus)
• The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder from the Japanese (Harvill Secker)
• The Armies, Evelio Rosero, translated by Anne McLean from the Spanish (Maclehose Press)
• The Blue Fox, Sjón, translated by Victoria Cribb from the Icelandic (Telegram)
• Novel 11, Book 18, Dag Solstad, translated by Sverre Lyngstad from the Norwegian (Harvill Secker)
• How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone, Saša Stanišić, translated by Anthea Bell from the German, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• A Blessed Child, Linn Ullmann, translated by Sarah Death from the Norwegian (Picador)
• The Informers, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McLean from the Spanish (Bloomsbury)
• Friendly Fire, A.B. Yehoshua, translated by Stuart Schoffman from the Hebrew (Halban)

The judges for this year’s prize are:

• Linda Grant, novelist
• Kate Griffin, ACE literature officer
• Fiona Sampson, editor, Poetry Review
• Mark Thwaite, blogger, www.readysteadybook.com
• Boyd Tonkin, literary editor, The Independent

The shortlist will be announced at the end of March.

Personally, I quite like this longlist. There’s a number of books tucked in there that I’ve been wanting to read for a while, notably Sjón’s The Blue Fox and Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The Informers. There are others that I’ve had on my shelves for a while - Céline Curiol’s Voice Over, which I’ve started twice to find myself never in the mood for, and György Dragomán’s The White King, a book I’ve twice heard him read from, but never got round to actually starting myself. (Dragomán, incidentally, is responsible for translating Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting into Hungarian.)

There are two that I’ve read - Yoko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool and Evelio Rosero’s The Armies (linked to above). The first I enjoyed to a degree, notable mention going to the title novella, but I wasn’t too impressed by the latter.  Another, How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone, by an author I’ve also twice heard readings from (both times fun and interesting), failed to interest me enough to read on to the end, although I wouldn’t rule out a second chance.

The best thing about such a list is that new writers are introduced. I’ve been aware of Alexander Ahndoril,  Linn Ullmann, and Thomas Glavinic but have never been compelled to rush into their work.  Eshkol Nevo, with Homesick, is a new name to me, and one I look forward to investigating.

I would make mention of the books that I thought may make the list but didn’t, but then most of the ones that I had in mind I hadn’t read anyway. I must confess a certain surprise at not seeing Muriel Barberry’s The Elegance Of The Hedgehog, translated by Alison Anderson from the French (Gallic Books) and to the absence of any Dalkey Archive titles, given that their Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen scooped the prize last year.

As usual, though, it’s beg-borrow-steal time, in order to sample the lot.

If there was ever a time to sit down and reflect on the good old days then that time is now. Those good old days, of course, pertain to the Man Booker Prize in the days before there was such a thing as the 21st Century. Is it any wonder that, when the Best Of The Booker public vote celebrated forty years of the prize, none of the shortlisted six knew what the Millenium Bug was? J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) seems a definite cut-off point. (In concession, if a panel hadn’t made that shortlist, Life Of Pi (2002) would no doubt have won the public vote.)

This year winner, after much ruby anniversary celebrations, the Man Booker Prize 2008 has gone to The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Fresh off the longlist announcement, I recall being happy with it. A nice jaunty little novel to kickstart the longlist before moving onto the heavier stuff.  Two weeks later and it had faded. Now, two months on, I can barely remember a thing about it. It’s that sort of book.

My feelings are that, overall, this year will go down as one of the worst years in Booker history, if not the worst. Having enjoyed the experience of reading the longlist (or as much of it as possible) in recent years, this is the first year where I’ve started most of the books and finished only four.  And it was only for an early sense of completion that I bothered to push past the opening of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44. After John Berger’s epistolary From A To X failed to deliver, Mohammed Hanif’s A Case Of Exploding Mangoes imploded, and Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog was found sniffing its own arse, I lost all faith in this year’s Booker delivering on the best Commonwealth books of the year.

Maybe it’s just me overreacting, as a reader, but I don’t think so. There are far too many marching in step on this one. When the longlist was announced on 29th July, many were surprised on the Man Booker discussion forum. Not at what was there, but what hadn’t made the cut. For example, where were, amongst many others, the following?

• The Wasted Vigil, Nadeem Aslam
• His Illegal Self, Peter Carey
• Sputnik Caledonia, Andrew Crumey
• The Imposter, Damon Galgut
• The Cellist Of Sarajevo, Steve Galloway
• The Spare Room, Helen Garner
• Keiron Smith, Boy, James Kelman
• Pilcrow, Adam Mars-Jones
• Trauma, Patrick McGrath
• The Truth Commissioner, David Park
• Breath, Tim Winton
• Carpentaria, Alexis Wright

The longlist was, in the opinion of many observers on the Booker forum, mostly substandard. The blame for this can only fall to the judging panel. Returning to those good old days, Booker judging panels have been graced by such eminent names as Saul Bellow, George Steiner, and Malcolm Bradbury. This year’s panel was chaired by Michael Portillo, who said he didn’t read all of the books; Hardeep Singh-Kohli, to whom Harry Potter is  great literature; and Louise Doughty, who appears to have more than one bee in her bonnet.

The first, commenting on the shortlist:

“Ignore the moaners and vested-interest commentators who have read a fraction of what we have this year but still feel entitled to bellow at us about just how wrong we are.”

Since the longlist is just a patchwork of opinions from a select panel, does it make their choices any more worthy? I don’t think so. Even if they have read the majority, if not all, of the submitted titles, most of them won’t shine and can be readily discarded. Not to forget either that many people will have read a mixture of eligible titles - some longlisted, some not - and are quite within their rights to call a poor year when they see it.

The second, even more ridiculous, was her attack on male academics sitting on judging panels:

… such men should not be invited on to judging panels as they “always have their eye on their reputations” and are too concerned with picking a “highbrow” author rather than a readable one. She added that they tended to made [sic] judgements based on “how well the winning book reflected on them”, often choosing the most obscure and self-consciously highbrow novelist, rather than considering the best entry.

…Academics automatically feel [the choice of Booker winner] will reflect on their career,” she said.

Is she serious? Perhaps she’s intent on dragging its prestige down so that one day she’ll win it. If she wants readable she’d be better signing up for Richard & Judy’s Book Club, or casting a vote at the Galaxy Awards. Still, what should we expect from the author of a how to write a book by numbers book?

In response to her ridiculous comments, Professor John Sutherland, in a moment of rare clarity (this is the guy, after all, who thought Salman Rushdie would win, reneging on a promise to curry his proof and eat it), said:

…that Doughty’s comments were unfair: “if she said it, ‘male academics’ is as offensive as it would be to say too many ‘female novelists’ are chosen as panellists. I don’t, of course, believe that they are, or that female novelists can be lumped together any more than male academics can.”

With the year arguably the worst in Booker history and the judging panel suffering a drought of academics, it only illustrates that Doughty’s opinions are served best with a pinch of salt. The Booker should strive to reward, in the opinion of the panel, the best book that the Commonwealth has to offer for that year. It should strive to recognise a book that can compete with the likes of Midnight’s Children to some day be the best of the Booker. Not ephemera.

Congratulations to Mr. Adiga.

Here are some opinons on The White Tiger from around the blogosphere.

• Asylum
• Complete Review
• dovegreyreader scribbles
• Guardian Book Blog
• Lizzy’s Literary Life
• Mookse and the Gripes
• Of Cabbages And Kings
• Redhead Rambles
• Shelf Love
• The Kingfisher Scrapbook

It’s that time of year again, where we all go running to our search engines and tap in the name of the latest Nobel laureate. In recent years the Swedish Academy have been kind to us in recognising some names with which we were already familiar (Pinter, Pamuk, and Lessing) after the resounding who? from British shores that came with the announcement that Elfriede Jelinek was the new laureate in 2004.

This year, like every other year, Ladbrokes trots out its odds once more and the same old names tend to appear. Perennial candidates include the Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer, the Syrian poet, Adonis, and Korean poet, Ko Un. The Finnish poet, Paavo Haavikko, officially withdrew from the running when he passed away earlier in the week. On top of the poets other favourites include a wave of American novelists, such as Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster and, er, Bob Dylan. Although their chances of winning may be zilch following on from comments made by Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, earlier in the week saying that the United States “too isolated, too insular” and doesn’t really “participate in the big dialogue of literature.”

There’s a wealth of names, drawn from all over the world, appearing on a discussion at World Literature Forum, with fingers crossed for Umberto Eco, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Andreï Makine, amongst many others.

For me, what with such a pool of names and most not sampled, all I can do is take a wild stab in the dark. The name that keeps coming to mind is Arnošt Lustig. It may be because he scooped the Franz Kafka Prize earlier this year - Jelinek and Pinter were both awarded this in consecutive years before becoming Nobel laureates those same years - but it’s also because of selfish reasons: I would like a novelist to win it, pretty much because I rarely read poetry or drama. My loss.

That said, who I would really like to see recognised, not having read him either, is Tomas Tranströmer.  The Swedish Academy haven’t announced a Scandinavian laureate since the controversy in 1974 where Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, members of the Academy, became Nobel laureates. I’d like to think, what with all Academy members from that time now dead, that the Swedish Academy feels it can now recognise its own again.

EDIT: In a way I’m rather happy with the announcement of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio as this year’s Nobel laureate as I’d never heard of him before, save for a bit of speculation in the run-up to the announcement, so he’s a new name to go looking for. Sadly, having looked around, his books are rather hard to come by, so there’s no getting ahead of the game, so to speak. It will be fun to see how quick he rushes back to print and who will have the honour of bringing him back to book store shelves.

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2008 has been announced.

• The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)
• Girl In A Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold (Tindal Street)
• The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)
• From A To X, John Berger (Verso)
• The Lost Dog, Michelle de Kretser (Chatto & Windus)
• Sea Of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)
• The Clothes On Their Backs, Linda Grant (Virago)
• A Case Of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif (Jonathan Cape)
• The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher (Fourth Estate)
• Netherland, Joseph O’Neill (Fourth Estate)
• The Enchantress Of Florence, Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape)
• Child 44, Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• A Fraction Of The Whole, Steve Toltz (Hamish Hamilton)

The shortlist will be announced six weeks from now, on 9th September, 2008, with the winner being declared on 14th October, 2008.

This year’s panel of judges tasked with whittling down over a hundred titles to the thirteen above, and ultimately to the winner, are:

Michael Portillo (Chair)
Alex Clark
Louise Doughty
James Heneage
Hardeep Singh Kohli

Personally, my first reaction was what?! Admittedly I’ve not read any of these but the inclusion of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 seems so odd, perhaps even anti-Booker, given that I’ve never viewed it as anything more than an over-hyped thriller. Some titles - the Arnold, the Grant - come so far out of left field as to be exciting, while the absence of the bigger hitters - no Carey, no Coetzee, no Crumey, no Galgut, no Winton - allows for some lesser known names in Hanif, Adiga, and Toltz. And even the lure of a sixteen year hiatus wasn’t enough for Helen Garner’s The Spare Room to see her onto the list.

A tip for anyone, especially those outside of the United Kingdom, looking to secure these titles: you’ll get free delivery worldwide from The Book Depository.

Following on from the 25th Anniversary ‘Booker Of Bookers’ in 1993, comes the 40th Anniversary ‘Best Of The Booker’, in which a panel of judges have saved the public the bother of whittling down all forty-one eligible titles to a more manageable six. Or, to put it another way, ensured that Life Of Pi, which would likely top a proper public vote, can’t win.

The shortlist, then, is:

• The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1995)
• Oscar And Lucinda, Peter Carey (1988)
• Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee (1999)
• The Siege Of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell (1973)
• The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer (1974)
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (1981)

The panel of judges were the biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, (chair); writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup; and John Mullan, Professor of English at University College, London.

In addition, Glendinning said:

‘It was a great experience, revisiting all the Booker and Man Booker Prize winners, and very tough arriving at the shortlist - but we really feel that the six novels we picked represent the best fiction-writing of the past forty years and that each one of them will stand the test of time. As to which of the six is the most important, and the most enjoyable, the Best of Booker - that is up to the readers to decide.’

While I’ve only read one of the titles listed, the list seems fair by all accounts, as all of the titles share a certain reknown that many other Booker winners don’t (Paul Scott’s Staying On anyone?) but I’m saddened to see that Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day didn’t make the final cut. Perhaps this shows what we’ve known all along regarding Booker judging panels in that they are out of touch with the readers. But we all know that the most popular book isn’t always the best book otherwise Harry Potter books would have been regular candidates for the regular Booker. So public be damned. Although it will no doubt come to pass that Midnight’s Children, as it was in 1993, will continue to reign as the Best of the Booker.

One other thing: it is strange to see Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist listed as potentially the Best of the Booker since it couldn’t hold its own against Stanley Middleton’s Holiday, back in 1974, when both books scooped the prize. Middleton, where are you now?

Whittled down from over 100 titles to a longlist of 17 announced in January, the titles were again reduced in March to a final 6. And now, in a ceremony this evening, the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced. The 2008 Prize has gone to Paul Verhaeghen for his own translation from the Dutch of Omega Minor, published by Dalkey Archive.

Since the £10,000 prize is split between both author and translator, Verhaeghan is eligible to the full amount but, instead, declined the money, much as he had done with the Flemish Culture Award. Instead, referencing the war in Iraq, he has asked for the money to be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union because:

“Withholding the tax portion of those 10,000 pounds from the US Treasury will shorten the war by a mere eye-blink-its cost is currently 3,810 dollar per second-but the ACLU can use that money to great effect in their legal battles against torture, detainee abuse, and the silence surrounding it.”

You can read his full non-acceptance speech on the Dalkey Archive site.

There’s not much I can say on the book as I’ve not read it. I’ve not even seen a copy in any book stores although I’m sure that will soon change. I’m a tad unhappy with myself for not reading it - or, indeed, any of the six shortlisted titles - as I had intended to do. But as one of my countrymen once said, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley” and I’ll just have to accept that.

If anyone is interested in discussing Paul Verhaeghen’s Omega Minor, there’s a thread on it over on the World Literature Forum. There’s also one on the subject of the prize itself.

In a world where books come and go at a seemingly increasing rate, so fast that by the time the Booker, Costas, and Orange have been won, attention turns to the next year’s hopefuls, praise be to the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. This is one award that feels more laidback, if only because the titles making its longlist, as regards publication, are quite a bit behind the crowd.

Nominations to the longlist come from participating libraries worldwide, which gives the award a unique slant, since titles in other awards typically are nominated by their publishers. And what a longlist it was, coming in string with a phenomenal 137 titles. Who’d be a judge? But judges there are, and they’ve whittled down the list to a more manageable eight.

The shortlist for 2008 is:

• The Speed Of Light, Javier Cercas
• The Sweet And Simple Kind, Yasmine Gooneraratne
• De Niro’s Game, Rawi Hage
• Dreams Of Speaking, Gail Jones
• Let It Be Morning, Sayed Kashua
• The Attack, Yasmina Khadra
• The Woman Who Waited, Andreï Makine
• Winterwood, Patrick McCabe

Of the titles, half are in translation, which is something else that makes the IMPAC Dublin an interesting award. But while it offers up a number of titles that may have been missed first time round, there’s still the sense that in the fast moving world of publishing, the titles, no matter how timeless they may come to be, are a little dated. Whoever wins won’t care, though, as the prize is €100,000 (split 75%/25% to author/translator in instances of translated works).

The winner will be announced on 12th June, 2008.

It’s that time of year again. No, not Easter, but for the announcement of the UK’s least interesting literary prizes. With the Man Booker there’s the sense that publishers are submitting the best of the best (if never to see them win) and the Costas, let’s face it, are there to mop up the best of the rest. But the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction? It proudly claims to be “the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman”. But what relevance does it have today when even by its own admission, as per its FAQ page, it’s set out what it achieved to do (especially with women scooping the Nobel, the Man Booker, and the Costa Best Book in 2007) :

At the time it was set up the considerable achievements of women novelists were often passed over by the major literary prizes.

The founders of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction wanted to do something about that. Which they did, very successfully.

Many years on from its creation and nobody can say women novelists are passed over by the major literary prizes.

As happens every year, a battle of the sexes (with each side infighting, too) arises and there’s no exception this year with novelist Tim Lott firing the opening salvo by declaring the prize “a sexist con trick”:

Women are predominant, in terms of numbers and power, in most of the major publishing houses and agencies. They sell most of the books, into a market that largely comprises women readers. They are favoured by what is overwhelmingly the most important publishing prize (the Richard and Judy list), and comprise most of the reading groups that drive sales. Girls in schools are more literate than boys, and pupils are taught reading mainly by female teachers promoting mainly female writers.

Following up on this, in the Times were John Sutherland’s claim that “ghettoising women writers did them more harm them good” and A.S Byatt’s declaration of the award being sexist and that she doesn’t allow her novels to be submitted for consideration. Anita Brookner, apparently, also feels the same. Back in 1998 Nadine Gordimer refused to be shortlisted for the prize on the grounds that it recognises only women writers. Either way, Times editor, Erica Wagner, has tried to get the last word in, urging detractors to “get over it”:

Get over the idea that prizes given to novels – of any kind, stripe, gender or nationality – can, in any way whatsoever, be described as “fair”.

Wagner’s claim is that if they have done anything wrong it’s the appointment of Lily Allen to the judging panel. Big deal! Referring back to the FAQs, the prize is exclusively judged by women “to celebrate women’s critical views as well as their writing”. Although it’s all supposition about Allen’s critical ability, the prize doesn’t set such a bar on its judges - as long as they have views.

On discussing the creation of the longlist the chair of the judges, Kirsty Lang, claims that the misery memoir has infected fiction penned by women:

Reading 120 books I did find myself thinking, ‘Oh god, not another dead baby’,” said Kirsty Lang, as the longlist for the prize was announced. “There were a hell of a lot of abused children and family secrets.”

The others responsible for this year’s longlist are Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, writer Bel Mooney, novelist Philippa Gregory, and singer Lily Allen.

The longlist, then, is as follows:

• The Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani
• The Room of Lost Things, Stella Duffy
• The Keep, Jennifer Egan
• The Gathering, Anne Enright
• The Clothes on Their Backs, Linda Grant
• The Master Bedroom, Tessa Hadley
• Fault Lines, Nancy Huston
• Sorry, Gail Jones
• The Outcast, Sadie Jones
• The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam, Lauren Liebenberg
• When We Were Bad, Charlotte Mendelson
• In The Dark, Deborah Moggach
• Mistress, Anita Nair
• Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill
• The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak
• The Septembers of Shiraz, Dalia Sofer
• The End of Mr Y, Scarlett Thomas
• Monster Love, Carol Topolski
• The Road Home, Rose Tremain
• Lottery, Patricia Wood

So twenty titles, seven debuts, and no place for big hitters like A.L Kennedy’s Day, Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, or Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods. Given the complaint about misery memoirs, it’s a wonder Anne Enright’s The Gathering made the cut.

The sad thing is that by directing the prize at women writers and readers it is effectively depriving itself of the women writing the types of books the prize would no doubt like to promote but have the sense to see that it has met its own goals and ran its course and that positive discrimination is still discrimination. And if a women takes the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction when it’s announced next month then that must surely put another question mark over the Orange Prize’s relevance.

The shortlist will be announced on 15th April, 2008, with the eventual award ceremony taking place on 4th June, 2008.