The 2009 Man Booker International Prize
The challenges of choosing a winner
Fiammetta Rocco is Administrator of the Man Booker International Prize
Like all journeys, the challenge of picking a winner for the £60,000 Man Booker international prize for 2009 began with a single step: making a list of contenders. Unlike most other literary prizes, here it is the judges who choose the authors. There are no submissions by publishers, agents or authors. The only criteria are that the award should be for an ‘achievement in fiction', that the author still be living and that the oeuvre be available in English.
The 2009 panel was the third in the prize's history. No author can win the biennial Man Booker award more than once, which meant that Ismail Kadaré of Albania and the venerable Nigerian, Chinua Achebe, were out of the running, having won in 2005 and 2007. But others were soon put forward in their place.
Between them the judges covered three continents and 13 time zones. One by one - Jane Smiley in the chair, with Amit Chaudhuri and Andrey Kurkov - they suggested names of authors they had read, studied, loved, admired. Some were well-known to all three of them. Some were just names, their work unfamiliar. One or two were completely unheard of until suggested by a single enthusiastic backer.
Passionate as well as knowledgeable, the three judges inevitably clashed. ‘Over my dead body' was a phrase repeated more than once, at which another judge would counter softly, ‘Yes, but worth giving another try.' Each one listened, even as they spoke.
These introductions and revelations made up the heart of the list of contenders. Then came the real work. Over nearly two years, the judges read more than 70 authors and 300 books. Their discussions proceeded during meetings in Washington and London, before flipping back to New York. In between they Skyped during Britain's late afternoon, timing the calls so as to catch Jane as she rose in California, Andrey as he was winding down in Kiev and Amit already in the dark in India.
By 12 May 2009, they were ready to choose a winner. A list of 14 authors had been made public a few weeks before. No Skype this time. The judges faced each other across a table.
If reading is a process of absorption, backing an author to victory takes different skills. Fluency and persuasion are the only battle-ready weapons in a debate where ideas are the armaments of choice. In London, that May morning, the arguments flew back and forth. Was James Kelman's Glasgow writing a personal attack on the reader, or did his unique social vision make him the Maxim Gorky of our day? And what about V.S. Naipaul? Was he Charles Dickens or R.K. Narayan, or an insufferable egomaniac whose only subject is himself? And if Joyce Carol Oates appeals to the head, does Mario Vargas Llosa then appeal to the heart and Svetlana Ulitskaya to our sense of family, our heart's ease?
Between speeches the judges tore little pieces of paper out of their notebooks and chose their four leading authors. Taking another scrap, they voted again giving marks out of ten. And a third time, giving marks out of five.
In the end Alice Munro wasn't anointed; she made herself known to the panel, as if she were just waiting in the wings. Every judge voted for her. As Margaret Atwood, a fellow Canadian, once wrote when discussing Munro: ‘You call this writing? Alice Munro! Now that's writing!'
Looking back over my notes of that morning, the effect she made was that while her work is quiet, it always comes as a surprise. She never makes a wrong move, never writes a bad story, and every tale stays with the reader long after the final page. ‘There is nobody like her', one judge said. ‘Nobody so able simultaneously to be quiet - and ruthless. She is, quite simply, the best.'
Fiammetta Rocco is Administrator of the Man Booker International Prize
