NEARLY every year it seems that the question is asked: whither the prize. But this year in particular.

The judges confounded the bookies by choosing a shortlist that lopped off the favourites — David Mitchell, Peter Carey, Andrew O’Hagan, Clair Messud — right away.

At the time the chair of the judges, Hermione Lee, remarked: “I feel they are such talented and exceptional writers that they don’t need us.”

It is a surprising and somewhat dispiriting remark. The Man Booker — on whose advisory committee I sit — isn’t a charity, and it seems unfortunate to dismiss out of hand some contenders for the prize because they are doing quite well already, thanks.

This is not to say that Kiran Desai isn’t a very fine novelist indeed: this is, as Professor Lee remarked, a powerful and wonderfully realised novel whose characters are never overshadowed by its politics.

It’s always a tough call, of course: and Professor Lee reminded us that when she was a judge in 1981 and the prize went to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, that author — who later won “The Booker of Bookers” for that novel — was, like Ms Desai, at the beginning of his career.

Tonight she seemed somewhat to retract her earlier statement in saying that, while the judges had created a “surprising” shortlist, this was not “out of a desire to step aside from the big names”.

I by no means begrudge Desai the prize but, this year, more than in some others, it has been made clear that prize judges are not calculating machines. They have opinions and, sometimes, agendas. John Sutherland, last year’s chair of the judges, said at the time of the shortlist that it might signal a changing of the literary guard, “the older generation giving way to the new”.

That may be so: but it’s by no means a certainty. The continuing interest in the prize lies in part in that every year a different, sometimes eclectic, group of judges chooses a different, sometimes eclectic, set of books.

Wherever the prize goes, it is certain we will still all be watching.

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