Man Booker Prize is ‘literary thermometer’

2009 shortlist offers ‘a cracking good read’

6 October 2009

Robert McCrum pays tribute to the cracking reads on this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist.

Writing in The Observer this weekend (4 October 2009), McCrum says,

"A lot of commentary, mine included, has focused on the "historical" nature of the shortlist, from Hilary Mantel's Tudor spellbinder Wolf Hall to Sarah Waters's psychodrama of austerity Britain (and homage to Josephine Tey) The Little Stranger. What no one has said, so far as I know, is that every one of these books is a cracking good read, a novel you can lose yourself in, with the childish gratification that good storytelling provides."

McCrum concludes by saying,

"(...) Booker remains a truly important prize because it's about so much more than the winner, or the shortlist. It has become the indispensable literary thermometer with which to take the temperature of contemporary fiction (outside the US). This year Booker seems to be reflecting the zeitgeist more than ever."

Read the full article in The Observer here.

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest