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Man Booker Prize 2008

Stewart

Stewart

Active Member
The longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2008 has been announced.

  • The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)
  • Girl In A Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold (Tindal Street)
  • The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)
  • From A To X, John Berger (Verso)
  • The Lost Dog, Michelle de Kretser (Chatto & Windus)
  • Sea Of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)
  • The Clothes On Their Backs, Linda Grant (Virago)
  • A Case Of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif (Jonathan Cape)
  • The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher (Fourth Estate)
  • Netherland, Joseph O’Neill (Fourth Estate)
  • The Enchantress Of Florence, Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape)
  • Child 44, Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
  • A Fraction Of The Whole, Steve Toltz (Hamish & Hamilton)
The shortlist will be announced six weeks from now, on 9th September, 2008, with the winner being declared on 14th October, 2008.

This year’s panel of judges tasked with whittling down over a hundred titles to the thirteen above, and ultimately to the winner, are:
Michael Portillo (Chair)
Alex Clark
Louise Doughty
James Heneage
Hardeep Singh Kohli
​
 
abecedarian said:
Do you have all the titles on your tbr shelf, ready to go?
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I have eleven of them ready to go, some on the shelves, some on hold at the library to be collected, and others in the post. Two (Girl In A Blue Dress and From A To X) aren't out yet.

How do you decide the pecking order?
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I don't. I just go with whatever I feel like. After I finish my current read I'll be getting started. I may even just read them in the order listed above.
 
Stewart said:
I don't. I just go with whatever I feel like. After I finish my current read I'll be getting started. I may even just read them in the order listed above.
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That's how I'd do it. If I made an ordered list, even if only in my head.. I'd still go by what sounded good at the moment. I have the same issues with menu/grocery shopping: how do I know what I'll want to cook and eat a week from today?:innocent:
 
As much as Salman Rushdie is a formidable force in the realm, I think it perhaps will cause a 'Booker fatigue' if Rushdie were to win *yet again* for The Enchantress. Yes, I think this even if The Enchantress where the prettiest, smartest, sexiest chick there ever was in the realm (for 2008, that is).

Unfair, I know, but the Booker Committee will come across as a bunch of Rushdie extremists. Yes, I also know the panel judges are different every year (except if they were selected on the panel before), but the public won't care too much for the details.

ds
 
direstraits said:
As much as Salman Rushdie is a formidable force in the realm, I think it perhaps will cause a 'Booker fatigue' if Rushdie were to win *yet again* for The Enchantress. Yes, I think this even if The Enchantress where the prettiest, smartest, sexiest chick there ever was in the realm (for 2008, that is).

Unfair, I know, but the Booker Committee will come across as a bunch of Rushdie extremists. Yes, I also know the panel judges are different every year (except if they were selected on the panel before), but the public won't care too much for the details.

ds
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You're right. Won't they have a problem if The Enchantress happens to be the best of the lot? Nothing against Rushdie, but I doubt it comes to that.
 
Stewart said:
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)
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Just finished this one and it's a nice antidote to the saffron and swirlng sari novels we get from India. Rather than tell us how good, romantic, sensual, aromatic, etc. that India is, we have a humorous take on Indian entrepreneurship, deliving into the seedier and miserable underbelly of life, notably poverty, prostitution, corruption, and servitude.
 
Aravind Adiga's book is his letter or confession of the path he taken to become an Entreprenuer. From a birth in "darkness", it is the tale of a man as he assesses his very limited options to taste success. Once he was determined that he will break away from the prision or the "chicken coup", he decides to do what it takes,knowing fully well how much a toll it will have on his dirt poor, extended family still in he "darkness". The winner of the Man booker prize for 2008, this book is very easy to finish in one extended read. It is a monolgue of the nature of Albert Camus' "The Fall" - yet while The Fall was all finnesse as it dwelled on the partucurs of sentiments, White tiger is
an extended letter. Balram's lesson learnt is that all those who have made it to the top have sacrificed others. In an India festerd with corruption, with no recovery in site, the author shows the otherside of the "shinning India" the dark side which makes do with barelt nothing for survival, as they spend their lives in life-long servitude.
Servitude, the inert characteristic of India which guarantees the success of the corrupt & the succesful!

I felt that the author could have spent a bit more on how the thought of achieving Balram's success at any cost developed in him. Don't get me wrong- that build up of a murderer thoughts is there. But the story would've been more effective & complete if that gradual build up of thoughts were present in a more precise manner.

Overall a good book & a book which reveals to the reader how much of India is actually shinning. There is a criticism that Booker award is usually given to books which self-criticise or look down upon their cutures. It could or couldn't be true. But Adiga presents his case in a manner that sounds utterly convincing!
:star4:
 
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