DAVID took on Goliath yesterday when three first-time authors found themselves up against literary heavyweights on the longlist of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize.
The publishing debut of Harry Thompson made such a dramatic impact on the Booker judges with his historical novel about Charles Darwin, This Thing Of Darkness, that they considered him worthy of comparison with J.M. Coetzee, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 as well as the Booker in 1983 and 1999.
In what was perceived as a particularly strong year for literature, this year’s list included Salman Rushdie, who won the “Booker of Bookers” for Midnight’s Children in 1993. This time, he has been longlisted for his forthcoming Shalimar the Clown, which is to be published next month.
The tale of love and revenge set in Kashmir is expected to cause fresh controversy for the author of The Satanic Verses. It details the transformation of a young Muslim boy from shy teenager to Islamic terrorist guided by a radical mullah.
Also on the list is Ian McEwan for Saturday, a fictional response to the attacks on New York and Washington; Kazuo Ishiguro for Never Let Me Go, an allegory set in a recognisably contemporary England; and Zadie Smith for her third novel, On Beauty.
Thompson, 45, a television producer from London, was taken aback at being longlisted: “It is unbelievable. It must be a huge mistake. It is astonishing company to be in — scary company to be in. I am flabbergasted. The list of surnames of the other nominees is like a Who’s Who’s of literature.”
The news was particularly sweet because he had inoperable lung cancer diagnosed just weeks before his book was published in June. “I have never smoked a cigarette in my life,” he said, recalling how he fell violently ill suddenly while attending a trade meeting for the novel. “I thought it was an aversion to marketing, but it turned out to be more serious.”
A spokeswoman for his publisher, Review, an imprint of Headline, said that she hoped that critics would now review it. Only the Daily Mail had done so, hailing it as a great thriller.
John Sutherland, the chairman of the judges, applauded the book as a novel of ideas, one that is astonishingly serious considering that its author specialised in producing television comedy programmes such as Have I Got News For You.
The 17 books on the longlist were whittled down from 109 entries by a panel that included Lindsay Duguid, the fiction editor of the Times Literary Supplement; the writer and antiquarian bookdealer Rick Gekoski; the novelist Josephine Hart; and David Sexton, the literary editor of the Evening Standard.
Professor Sutherland, Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, told The Times that there was an embarrassment of riches: “It is almost invidious to say that one of these is better than the others. We were talking at the meeting whether this was the strongest year since the Booker began or the second strongest, when [in 1980] there was [Anthony] Burgess versus [William] Golding: Godzilla versus King Kong.”
The value of the Booker goes well beyond the £50,000 cash prize. Such is the impact on sales that printers were under instruction last year from Alan Hollinghurst’s publisher, Picador, to watch the television coverage and to begin printing a second after the 10.25pm announcement if its man won. It was preparing for a 500 per cent uplift in sales of The Line of Beauty.
Rodney Troubridge, fiction buyer for Waterstone’s, applauded the range of authors: “There is something for everybody,” he said. He noted that Sebastian Faulks was among the notable omissions.
The shortlist will be announced on September 8 and the overall winner picked on October 10.
Predicting a winner will not be easy. Bookmakers were divided yesterday. William Hill had McEwan as 3-1 favourite, Ladbrokes chose Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George at 4-1.
THE LIST
THE HARMONY SILK FACTORY
Tash Aw
Ladbrokes 20-1
Three accounts of a haunting episode in the history of a Malaysian Chinese family
THE SEA
John Banville
Ladbrokes 16-1
Art historian confronts a recent loss and trauma
ARTHUR & GEORGE
Julian Barnes
Ladbrokes 4-1
An investigation of a grisly true crime
A LONG LONG WAY
Sebastian Barry
Ladbrokes 16-1
Teenager leaves home in 1914 to fight for the Allies
SLOW MAN
J.M. Coetzee
Ladbrokes 20-1
A man loses a leg in a bike accident and develops a relationship with a nurse
IN THE FOLD
Rachel Cusk
Ladbrokes 20-1
Deception within a marriage
NEVER LET ME GO
Kazuo Ishiguro
Ladbrokes 20-1
Sinister story about children being bred for experiments
ALL FOR LOVE
Dan Jacobson
Ladbrokes 8-1
Love story between the daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium and a soldier ten years her junior
A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN
Marina Lewycka
Ladbrokes 20-1
Feuding Anglo-Ukrainian family
BEYOND BLACK
Hilary Mantel
Ladbrokes 8-1
Medium passes on messages from people’s dead ancestors
SATURDAY
Ian McEwan
Ladbrokes 5-1
Post-9/11 Britain and the fragility of middle-class values
THE PEOPLE’S ACT OF LOVE
James Meek
Ladbrokes 20-1
Fable set in 1919 Siberia
SHALIMAR THE CLOWN
Salman Rushdie
Ladbrokes 7-1
Tale of love and revenge
THE ACCIDENTAL
Ali Smith
Ladbrokes 12-1
A stranger turns up at a family’s Norfolk holiday home
ON BEAUTY
Zadie Smith
Ladbrokes 16-1
Social comedy about cross-generational misunderstanding
THIS THING OF DARKNESS
Harry Thompson
Ladbrokes 20-1
The adventures of Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle
THIS IS THE COUNTRY
William Wall
Ladbrokes 20-1
Bright teenager heads for trouble
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