Opinion Prize of place

What follows is not criticism of the prize,which was established with honourable intentions. Nor is this a note of support for Ananthamurthy,who has given a creditable account of himself already,saying that his inclusion in the shortlist brought Kannada on par with other world languages,and that he spoke as “one of many writing in their mother tongues in India”.

The Man Booker International was a step up from Anglophone literary prizes,which are usually limited by language and location. To qualify,a writer’s work must only be generally available in English,and can even be in translation. The prize was designed to bring down language barriers and let world literatures compete via English. It’s a fine project,except that location still matters.

Five extraordinary writers have won the prize since it was instituted in 2005 — the Albanian Ismail Kadare,the Nigerian Chinua Achebe,the Canadian Alice Munro,and Philip Roth and Lydia Davis,both Americans. Except Kadare,they are all either native to Britain or North America,or have strong ties to them through publishing and academia. Kadare has ties with France,which is also a literary springboard. For instance,it was a French translation of Ficciones which brought Jorge Luis Borges to international attention,though his peers were also producing experimental work in Buenos Aires at the time.

A similar pattern of localisation is found among the judges. This year,it was Sir Christopher Ricks,Tim Parks and Aminatta Forna (English),Elif Batuman (American) and Yiyun Li (Chinese American). Earlier,exceptions to this pattern have included the Ukrainian Andrey Kurkov and Amit Chaudhuri,but even he divides his time between Kolkata and Norwich,UK. Judges themselves nominate writers without taking external recommendations. All the 10 contenders,including South Asians Ananthamurthy and Intizar Hussain,and the winner,Lydia Davis,were there because jury members valued their work.

Like most assemblies,literary juries come to a consensus by pitching and persuading each other. There is nothing scientific about the process,human factors are at play and perfect competition is perfectly impossible. So it would be a bit silly to ask if Ananthamurthy has been unfairly denied his due. Or to ask whether Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis was unfairly passed over for the big Booker. Literary competition is principally about human responses and impressions,rather than legalistic notions of fairness. But given the patterns that are visible,one may reasonably ask: when a literary contest is decided in Britain or Europe,is it easier for a jury to agree on a writer who belongs in the local literary milieu or has strong links with it?

Is this an important question at all? The international prize is regarded as a sidekick of the Man Booker Prize and is awarded every two years,not annually like the main fixture. But the power differential between them may not last. The English language is gaining heft and ever-larger populations outside the Anglophone world are being educated in it. In India,a generation which used to read mainly in Indian languages is using the simplicities of Amish Tripathi and Chetan Bhagat as stepping stones and may eventually produce a new literary culture in English. At that point,which may come sooner than London and New York City imagine,these traditional centres of Anglophone publishing would have to share power with Delhi,Karachi and Shanghai. Because publishing is an industry,and industries tend to move where their wares are produced and consumed the most.

If the Booker International had been decided in Delhi,Lydia Davis may not have fared all that well. While she is a noted translator and there is a huge fan base for her minimalist writing —-some stories are fragments as small as the newspaper reports of Ananthamurthy’s loss — she is not widely read here. Her identity could have been reduced to that of the former wife of the ever-popular Paul Auster,whom she depicts in a possibly autobiographical short story titled “Bone”,which describes developments after a fishbone caught in his throat in Paris. Ananthamurthy is a powerful presence in Indian letters and was represented to the world by the redoubtable intellectual A.K. Ramanujan’s translation of Samskara. He is so clearly eminent that he invites parodies and send-ups. In Delhi,he would have won hands down. And that would have seemed unfair,too.

Finally,fairness matters because literary awards produce commercial advantage. They help publishers market books and authors. There will be more awards like the Booker International,globalising and annihilating the distance between cultures. But if location still mattered,it would be so ironical.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com