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Tuesday 26 July 2016

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Man Booker row rumbles on as Lady Antonia Fraser rejects panel offer

Lady Antonia Fraser has rejected an invitation to serve on the new Man Booker International Prize e-council, after the fiction award was extended worldwide.

Lady Antonia Fraser
Lady Antonia Fraser Photo: Andrew Crowley

It caused debate and consternation throughout the literary world after announcing a major change last week, but it appears the Man Booker Prize has started to feel the effects of its global expansion.

Lady Antonia Fraser has become the first to announce she has “resigned” from the advisory committee to the international version of the prize, claiming she was not “warned” about the change in rules.

Organisers have confirmed she has now declined her invitation to sit on the panel, made up of past Booker Prize winners and judges.

Last week, Man Booker Prize for Fiction organisers confirmed the award it to be expanded across the globe, with any author writing in English and published in the UK being eligible to win.

It had previously only been open to novelists holding a British, Irish, Commonweath or Zimbabwean passport, with American authors now considered for the first time.

The announcement had already raised questions about the position of the separate Man Booker International Prize, set up in for authors of any nationality and already including US writers.

While it has a distinct aim, being awarded every two years to honour one writer’s career and lifetime contribution, some feared it would become less relevant after the same authors were made eligible for the Fiction prize.

Lady Antonia last night told the Evening Standard: “I have resigned from the committee since I was not warned about this when I was asked to join in August.”

She told the Telegraph she did not wish to comment further on the matter.

A spokeswoman for the prize confirmed Lady Antonia had previously “been in touch to say she was interested” in serving on the council, but had now formally declined the invitation.

All former prize winners and authors had been approached in August to form the new “e-Council” panel, with the intention of assisting the five main judges.

At the time, it was announced that it would “act as an informal advisory network who can offer a wealth of knowledge and experience in international literature”.

Lady Antonia, the widow of playwright Harold Pinter, had served as a judge for the main Booker fiction prize in 1970 and 1971, when the award was won by Bernice Rubens for The Elected Member and V.S Naipaul for In A Free State respectively.

The full e–council for this year, the first since the prize’s inception, has not yet been announced, as organisers wait for all invitees to respond.

Announcing the changes to the fiction prize last week, organiser said they hoped opposition from British authors would not lead to a boycott of the prize.

Jonathan Taylor, chairman of trustees, added he believed the changes “are going to encourage traditional and new publishers and bring more excellent, literary fiction to the attention of more readers around the world”.

Members of the board added it was a "big change" that had been considered seriously for around 18 months, but said it should not be "frightening" for authors.

Some writers have already voiced their reservations, with Lord Bragg saying he was "disappointed... though not that surprised", while Howard Jacobson, who won the prize with The Finkler Question in 2010, told The Telegraph it was the "wrong decision".

Jim Crace, nominated this year for Harvest, said: "There's something in there that you would lose if you open it up to American authors."

The Man Booker International Prize, set up in 2004 to complement the main fiction award, with £60,000 given to an author chosen solely by the judges.

The 2013 prize was awarded to American author Lydia Davis, with Philip Roth, from the US, Alice Munro from Canada, Chinua Achebe from Nigeria and Ismail Kadare from Albania all winning since 2005.

The judging panel is this year chaired by Professor Marina Warner, and is made up of author Nadeem Aslam, writer and critic Elleke Boehmer, editorial director of the New York Review Classics series Edwin Frank, and Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature Wen-chin Ouyang.

PICTURE SPECIAL: BOOKER PRIZE WINNERS SINCE 1990.

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