Man Booker judges consider every title

Chair assures that Man Booker judges consider each submission

5 August 2007

Sir Howard Davies, Chair of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction, has reassured cynics that the judges do read every single submission. In his first blog entry for the Man Booker Prize website, Davies writes, ‘Surely you don’t read them all’, my fellow judges and I are regularly and tiresomely asked, as if we have a team of copy tasters at our disposal?’

Spotting a ‘turkey’

Davies, Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, says it is impossible to ’spot a turkey after 10 pages’, emphasising the importance of giving each novel a chance. ’Even when you find an official Bernard Matthews label affixed to Chapter One, sometimes a swan swims into view before the end.’

Howard Davies is an avid reader. He was a regular fiction reviewer for The Literary Review for many years, and has also reviewed fiction for Books and Bookmen and The Times. He reads novels in English and French and is a member of the Powys and Wyndham Lewis Societies.

The longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize will be announced on 7 August 2007.

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest