T'sA&the Booker

Judges disagree over shortlist for Booker Prize

Excerpted from The Independent (London), 25 September 25 1991: 3

By Robert Winder, Literary Editor

THE SHORTLIST for this year’s Booker Prize was announced yesterday, after "strong disagreements" between the judges, at the Savile Club, London.

The six novels, chosen from 108 books, are:

	Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis (Cape), the story, told backwards, of a Nazi doctor;
	The Van by Roddy Doyle (Secker & Warburg), the adventures of a fish-and-chip family in Dublin;
	Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (Faber), a first novel about an innocent trapped by the corruption of Bombay;
	The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo (Chatto), an adventure set against guerrilla warfare on a Pacific island;
	The Famished Road by Ben Okri (Cape), a vision of a life linked to a childhood spirit-world;
	Reading Turgenev, from Two Lives, by William Trevor (Viking), which describes a desolate Irish marriage and a redemptive love affair. Unusually, the judges selected just one part of a work.

It is the first time Martin Amis has appeared on the shortlist, and the bookmakers William Hill made Time’s Arrow the 2-1 favourite for the pounds 20,000 award on 22 October. For only the second time in its 21-year history, the shortlist contains no women. Carmen Callil, of Chatto and Windus, said: "It’ll strike everyone as odd, but the judges have to make their choice." Tom Maschler at Jonathan Cape said: "It is exceptional, but it’s not a reflection of anything."

Among notable omissions were The Kindness of Women by J G Ballard, which was perhaps too autobiographical to be considered, Wise Children by Angela Carter, which some critics thought her finest book, and Murther and Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies.

But Jeremy Treglown, the chairman of the judges, said: "This has been an extremely good year in which it has been difficult to reduce our choice to six titles. There have been strong disagreements but I am confident that we have made much the best possible choice."

The other judges were Penelope Fitzgerald, a former winner and three times a shortlisted author; Nicholas Mosley, winner of last year’s Whitbread Prize; Jonathan Keates; and Ann Schlee.

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