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Friday 25 July 2014

Judge quits over Philip Roth's Booker award

Carmen Callil, founder of Virago Press, quits Booker International Prize panel in protest as she dismisses Philip Roth saying: 'I don't rate him as a writer at all.'

American author Philip Roth
 
Image 1 of 3
American author Philip Roth Photo: AP
Carmen Callil, founder of Virago Press, has quit the panel of the Man Booker International Prize after they awarded the 2011 Prize to Philip Roth. Callil is seen her in 1996.
 
Image 1 of 3
Carmen Callil, founder of Virago Press, has quit the panel of the Man Booker International Prize after they awarded the 2011 Prize to Philip Roth. Callil is seen her in 1996. 
Philip Roth has been awarded the 2011 Man Booker International Prize
 
Image 1 of 3
Philip Roth has been awarded the 2011 Man Booker International Prize Photo: AP

One of the judging panel for the Man Booker International prize has withdrawn in protest after Philip Roth was awarded the 2011 prize.

Author and publisher Carmen Callil is angered by the decision to hand the award to the 78-year-old Pulitzer prize-winning American author.

Callil said: "He goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe".

The award, worth £60,000, is presented every two years for achievement in fiction on the world stage and Roth, 78, beat 12 rival authors - including Rohinton Mistry, Philip Pullman and Anne Tyler - to the award.

Rick Gekoski, a writer and rare book dealer, was the chair of the three-person panel, which also included South African novelist Justin Cartwright. After the decision to give the prize to Roth, Callil chose to retire from the panel.

Callil - founder of the feminist publishing house Virago - added: "I don't rate him as a writer at all. I made it clear that I wouldn't have put him on the longlist, so I was amazed when he stayed there. He was the only one I didn't admire – all the others were fine. Roth goes to the core of their [Cartwright and Gekoski's] beings. But he certainly doesn't go to the core of mine . . .Emperor's clothes: in 20 years' time will anyone read him?

"I've judged many prizes before and I've rarely had my own favourite. We should have discussed everything more but Philip Roth came out like a thunderbolt, and I was too surprised. We took a couple of days to brood, and then I spoke to Justin and said I thought I should give in, if I didn't have to have anything to do with the winner. So I said I didn't want my name attached to it, and retired. You can't be asked to judge, and then not judge."

Gekoski, who announced the award in Sydney, said the decision to pick Roth had been reached "slowly and with a great deal of discussion and a considerable amount of argument".

"Three is a very dangerous number, a hard number to come to a decision. Two people came in very, very strongly supporting one writer, and one not," he said. "Literary prizes are generally pretty contentious [and] you have to guard against satisfying the judges rather than picking the right author."

He said that in a field which contained Roth, "tell me who else we could have picked?"

Roth's work - amid accusations of misogyny - continues to divide opinion. For author Linda Grant, he is "without doubt the greatest novelist writing in English today" but American writer Jacqueline Susann said once: "Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him."

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