How to look past the Booker shortlist’s buzz culture (now with added Americans)
What's more important: winning a literary award, or being shortlisted for one? And who's reading all the books that aren't listed?
10 Sep 2014 12:00
Preti Taneja
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Writing and Publishing
Image via shereadsandreads.blogspot.com.au
The books we’ll be buying for Christmas are making themselves known, their places in the various longlists and shortlists fiercely discussed in the papers. Every named writer wins a sticker on their book jacket and in an ever-decreasing number of bookshops; the reader is bombarded with rosettes. The Samuel Johnson Prize, the Orwell Prize, the Desmond Eliot Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Bailey’s Prize which was once the Women’s Prize, which was once the Orange Prize – all with eminent judges and various rules.
Preti Taneja is a creative writer, editor, academic, documentary-maker, producer and human rights activist. She edits the website Visual Verse (www.visualverse.org) and works at Jesus College, Cambridge as Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Associate, researching siblings, Shakespeare and psychoanalysis. She also teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London, on subjects including JM Coetzee and on the craft of creative writing. Preti can also be heard on Radio 3 as a New Generation Thinker talking mostly about Shakespeare, India and adaptation.
