More on Amis and the Politics of the Booker

[An excerpt from "Amis survives hatchet job on day of the long knives for other star writers," by John Ezard; The Guardian, August 16, 2003]

In the blurb to Martin Amis's new novel Yellow Dog, out next month, his publishers say "Novelists have noticed that contemporary reality keeps outdoing their imaginations."

To the relief of Amis and those who pay his generous advances, the Booker prize judges yesterday avoided outdoing the worst imaginings of the author by leaving him off this year's longlist of 23 novels.

Despite forecasts, the judges included Yellow Dog - billed as "a post 9/11 comedy" - in the list. This gives Amis another chance, in his 31-year writing career, of reaching next month's Booker shortlist.

Amis, once considered a certainty to win the prize as his father Kingsley Amis did, has been shortlisted only once - for Time's Arrow in 1991. Otherwise it was virtually a day of the long knives for a clutch of established writers who would normally have expected to move into the semi-final stage of the contest.

Those who fell in the first round included two-time winner Peter Carey, Pat Barker, who won in 1995 for the third of her wartime Ghost Road trilogy, and the one-time shortlisted authors Peter Ackroyd, JG Ballard and Jim Crace. Among the longlist's only survivors from the eminences of previous Booker prizes were JM Coetzee, a winner in 1983 and 1989, Graham Swift, who won in 1996 with Waterland, and the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, winner in 2001.

Outsiders will watch the next stage of judging closely for signs of the contest moving further away from literary novels, and towards books which "tell a story", as some of last year's judges said they wanted. The victory last year for Yann Martel's Life of Pi - which has subsequently sold 226,000 copies - was seen by some as part of this trend.

For Martin Amis, the longlist brought the extra satisfaction of seeing his rival Tibor Fischer fail to reach the list with Voyage to the End of the Room. Fischer set speculative tongues wagging by writing mischievously in the Daily Telegraph earlier this month . . . I'm a little ashamed to admit that, as a writer, I'm relieved Amis has produced a novel unworthy of his talent . . .

Last night the chief organiser of the prize, Martyn Goff, said the judges had found Fischer's view "wide of the mark".

Alongside veterans like the Blairite peer Melvyn Bragg, the 23 books on the longlist included nine authors who are not yet well-known, and four first-time novelists. Some are so little known that even the Booker organisation cannot get their name right DBC Pierre, first-time author of Vernon God Little, was billed in the press release as DCB Pierre.

Among the others was Monica Ali's well-reviewed Brick Lane. One unusual choice is Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, about a 15-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome. The bookmakers William Hill last night installed Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello as 6-1 favourite, with Bragg's Crossing the Lines and Amis as second favourites at 8-1.

Mr Goff denied the judges had operated a new-broom policy against star authors. "They took the view that a number of the writers' latest novels were worthy, but did not altogether work well enough to go on the list."

The chairman of the judges, John Carey, said, "This is a strong and diverse longlist, with a pleasing component of new names." The other judges are the academic and critic AC Grayling; mountaineer and journalist Rebecca Stephens; the novelist and broadcaster Francine Stock; and the novelist, biographer and literary critic DJ Taylor.

Other first-time novelists listed are Gerard Donovan's Schopenhauer's Telescope, and Clare Morrall's Astonishing Splashes of Colour.