Bob Dylan is now a literary celebrity. And next week, the Booker Prize judges will anoint another. The tag is still chiefly attached to men but women authors shouldn’t despair: fame and good writing can be uneasy bedfellows.
This year’s competition includes a more eclectic range of writers than perhaps we’ve become used to.
Marlon James, who this week became the first Jamaican to win the Man Booker Prize, represents a new generation of Caribbean novelists.
Neil Hall/Reuters
Marlon James won the Booker Prize this week with a book that focuses on the unrest and violence of 1970s Jamaica, a troubled chapter that continues to shape the island nation’s present - and its future.
The book prize is the publisher’s answer to the persistent grumble that fiction is in its death throes; an attempt to combat the perceived threat of the digital.
Chigozie Obioma, whose book The Fishermen has been nominated for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Supplied
Framing younger writers’ work within the footsteps of giants is always fraught with risk; the risk of shadowing the merits and faults of the former in an attempt to assess the legacy of the latter.
You might have thought that the world’s most prestigious prize for fiction was a level playing field. In fact, rule changes have made it much easier for big publishers to dominate.