On a Prize and a Protest

We tease out from a flurry of literary prizes a reading list for rainy days: a recap of this month8217;s events and the contenders

When salman rushdie was knighted recently, the news did more than stir the Iranian and Pakistani governments into lodging protests. The honour for a writer who so completely changed the way Indian fiction was written in English with his 1981 book, Midnight8217;s Children, brought into focus the value of literary prizes. It is matter of speculation whether the novel would have made the same kind of splash or had the same impact on future writers if he had not got the Booker Prize for it. Even his most devoted readers think it unlikely. Twelve years later, Midnight8217;s Children would get the Booker of Bookers as the best novel to receive the prize in its first 25 years.

But other than that, it has been a pretty lean harvest of literary honours for Rushdie, who went on to write, among other books, Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor8217;s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feat a collaboration of sorts with singer Bono, in which Rushdie bid a fictional farewell to India, only8212;and thankfully8212;to retract in soon after and Shalimar the Clown. Many of these books have been in contention for the Booker, but not one made the final cut. Every so often, the grapevine from Stockholm too has it that he is on the verge of being made a Nobel Laureate, but the final announcement does not feature him.

Is Rushdie then past his best? Maybe not. In his book, Economy of Prestige, a cultural history of literary honours, James English argues that when an acclaimed author is passed over, a valuable purpose is served. It gets people interested by giving them an argument to make against the final selection, and to articulate their support for their favourite writers.

So it has been with Rushdie. Knighthood is all very well. It is, at the very least, a provocation to dip into his long list of novels, and return to wondering when the truly meaningful honour will come his way, or else, to mocking various juries ignoring the master and merrily doling out the prizes to new kids on the block, as with the last Booker to Kiran Desai, or to lesser known competitors, as we shall soon see.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
She8217;s one of the youngsters gaining acknowledgements that post-colonial literature is in accomplished hands. Conferred the Orange Prize this month for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, the 29-year-old Nigerian is being hailed as a legatee to Chinua Achebe more on him next. Among the other books in contention were Kiran Desai8217;s The Inheritance of Loss on the wages of migration in Kalimpong and in America8217;s cities and Anne Tyler8217;s Digging to America a celebration of globalisation, with an American family and Iranian family bonding after they both adopt Korean children. Set in 1960s Nigeria, Adichie8217;s book covers the tragedies that visited Biafra during the civil war at the end of that decade. On a biographical note, both her civilian grandfathers died in the war. And she lived in house in which Achebe once resided.

Chinua Achebe
The grand old man, now 76, of Nigerian literature got the Man Booker International prize this month. Achebe, another favourite for the Nobel, too has written extensively on Biafra. He first attracted appreciation with Things Fall Apart 1958 and has assiduously examined the interaction of Africa and the West and highlighted the effects of Western myth-making about Africa. He has been an especially keen critic of Joseph Conrad. Other novels include Anthills of the Savannah, which was shortlisted for the Booker in 1987.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Also this month, Chandrasekarn, a former chief of Washington Post8217;s Baghdad bureau, got the 30,000 pound Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction for Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq8217;s Green Zone, a depiction of the early days of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority8217;s government of Iraq. He presents the disasters accumulated by Paul Bremer8217;s regime in 2003 and 2004, though a few achievements do accrue. And as the title suggests, the cast of characters remains limited to Americans. But as Arab commentator Fouad Ajami recently said, we still await a comprehensive telling the post-invasion days from the perspective of Iraqis.

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Per Petterson
Here8217;s another literary prize Rushdie lost out on this month: the 100,000 pound Impac Dublin award. The award is unique for the time span it covers. This year8217;s contenders, for instance, would have had to be published in English between January and December 2005, giving the judges a longer measure of the impact the books made. In the fray were Shalimar the Clown, J.M. Coetzee8217;s Slow Man, Cormac McCarthy8217;s No Country for Old Men, Julian Barnes8217;s Arthur and George and Jonathan Safran Foer8217;s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Out Stealing Horses by Petterson, a Norwegian, traces a grown man8217;s disturbing remembrances of his childhood.