Prizes and Glory

Now I don't know how you choose your books when browsing at a book store but I have two simple criteria for selecting what to spend my precious 8-10 quid on. One, go for something which is highly recommended by a fellow reader. No I don't trust the Times bestseller list because I recall the puke worthy Devil Wears Prada being on it at some point of time. English literature reached it's nadir when that book became a best seller. Seriously! The second and more often employed criterion is awards or prizes bestowed on a book. You cant usually go wrong with a Booker winner (The Sea by John Banville being a serious aberration) or a Grand Prix. With a Nobel you are sure to be in for a heavy haul with a thesaurus by your side. But do we readers know where these literary prizes came from or what they represent? To confess I had no clue....till I decided to explore a little further. Here is a lowdown of what I found.

The Booker (short for Man Booker) : awarded each year to the best full length English novel by an author residing in Commonwealth countries, Ireland or Zimbabwe.

The Whitbread (now known as the Costa Book Award) : given to english novels of authors based in the UK and Ireland. Winning novels are usually of high literary merit but also enjoyable reading for the people generally. More populist than the Booker

The James Tait Black Memorial Prize : oldest and one of the most prestigious British awards. Because these have no commercial sponsors and are selected by a professor of english with the help of PhD student, the prize winning books are generally considered to be very high brow. Famous for selecting people who later went on to pick up the Nobel.

The Orange prize: given to the best English novel written by a woman of any nationality. This prize was established in response to the all male 1991 Booker shortlist.

Le Grand Prix du roman: highest French recognition for French literature

The Pulitzer Prize: awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author for novels preferably dealing with American life.

Neustadt International Prize: I have never come across this one but according to Wikipedia this prize is second only to the Nobel in prestige. Like the Nobel, it is awarded for an entire body of work rather than a novel. I could only recognise Gabriel Garcia Marquez amongst the list of winners.

Sahitya Akademi Award: given by India's National Academy of Letters, it recognises Indian vernacular writers of outstanding repute.

The Jnanpith Award: India's highest literary award. Prior to 1982, it was given for a single piece of work but now given for lifetime contribution to Indian literature.

And finally the bid daddy of it all....the Nobel Prize in Literature: according to the will of Alfred Nobel, this prize is bestowed on any author who has produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in the ideal direction". Nobel's choice of emphasis on "idealistic" or "ideal" (in English translation of the will) has let to recurrent controversy. The Swedish word "idealisk" can be translated as either idealistic or ideal. A strict interpretation of this meant that authors such as James Joyce, Tolstoy, Henry James never received this award. Apparently, the judges have now adopted a more liberal attitude.

I was looking at the list of authors who never got the Nobel and it reads like the list of whos who of great literature. Proust, John Updike, Chekov, Nobokov, Emile Zola, Henry Ibsen, Jorge Borges, Graham Greene, W.H. Auden. Apparently Salman Rushdie will never get it because he is "too predictable and too popular".

All this said, prizes are never foolproof and there are a lot of interesting controversies and politics surrounding the choice of the winners. Statistically speaking, Atonement by Ian McEwan book is the 5th best book published in the world ever. It is number 5 on the list of novels with most awards. We all have read it. It is crap. You know it and I know it. Need I say more?