Women "dominate" the Bookers

[MsAmerica]

You could say that women are dominating the Booker short list.

Or you could say that not a single white male is on the list.

Women dominate 2024 Booker Prize shortlist
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7566xzv3n7o.amp

Female authors light up the Booker Prize shortlist
https://theweek.com/culture-life/books/female-authors-dominate-the-booker-prize-shortlist

Booker Prize shortlist announced with highest ever number of female authors
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/booker-prize-shortlist-announced-with-highest-ever-number-of-female-authors

There's a lot of attention around this this year. The comments section of The Times was full of outraged men. Weirdly none of them seemed to bothered last year when there were 5 men (including 3 Pauls) and no women on the shortlist.

I think it's a bit of an odd list this year with some real marmite books - Held and Orbital particularly divisive - but other than My Friends, there weren't any standouts from the longlist that I thought should make it (I've only read 5). I really liked The Safe Keep.

It'll be interesting to see if the sole man ends up winning it - he's also the favourite.

Well one wonders for how many years white men dominated it, completely unremarked und un-newsworthy.

im glad they're getting a taste of how it feels to be overlooked to be honest

Sorry correcting myself - there was 1 woman and 5 men on the 2023 shortlist.

Presumably not this year.

You're spectacularly missing the point.

It was so nice to see you mentioning RBG that I wanted to post her exact remark. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that when she was asked how many women should be in the Supreme Court (which has nine justices), she quipped "Why not all of them?" Now, of course she was probably asked this more than once and may have given slightly different answers, but this is the one that pops up online:

“When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?’ and my answer is: "When there are nine." People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

By the way, it's amazing to think how many women are there now, and even more amazing how many of the male justices have been accused of improprieties/illegalities.

Samantha Harvey’s Orbital has won!

Well it should be. They should be ruthlessly honest and judge each book purely on merit. I ignore the Booker Prize now. In fact, I pretty much ignore contemporary fiction. The literary establishment has completely lost my trust. Harold Bloom warned about this years ago, but no one listened.

I don't follow the Bookers, so I'm no expert, but is it possible not that they're choosing "controversial" novels, but that they're choosing "innovative" novels, respecting efforts of authors to push boundaries, to experiment, to try something different?

But that's a political view, not a literary one.

Although I suppose that as the Booker is no longer a literary prize, you're in line with its thinking.

I used to follow it avidly, buy all the shortlisted books but now I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. The shortlist has to tick several boxes and very few of them are to do with the book's worth.

I follow other prizes like the Baillie Gifford, the Walter Scott, The Portico and Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime.

No.

They should make it more inclusive and open the prize up to people who don’t read and can’t write books. They should win and the guardian should write an article about it.

I think they should reflect the UK population and aim to have 50:50 gender , if there are 10 shortlisted: 1 or 2 ethnic minority authors, one from Scotland and Northern Ireland/Wales alternating years. Also only one who attended a private school and at least one or two with a disadvantaged childhood eg free school meals. Only one or two openly gay. This should help make the book selections more relevant to general population.

@Halfemptyhalfling the Booker Prize is open to all books written in English (it used to be Commonwealth, now includes the US) not just books written in the UK. So if you include the population of all English speaking countries then your proportionate racial makeup would be different to what you are suggesting. Over half would be from the Indian subcontinent and most of the rest would be African with a token white writer.

Unlike @Dappy777 I don't believe that dead white men wrote better books than anyone else so am quite chilled about literary prizes drawing attention to writers from different backgrounds that don't necessarily get a lot of attention otherwise.

And we all know that the writing that lasts isn't necessarily the most popular when it's written. Compare Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen. Although to be fair to Walter Scott he did, unlike most of his contemporaries, recognise that Jane Austen was a great writer. Most of them dismissed her as a woman writer writing parochial books for women.

I read that there was one British contender - the lady who won.
most are Americans -but American competitions don’t allow Brits.

So you don't really care about choosing the supposedly best books? You're more interested in not hurting the feelings of minorities?

The rules were changed in 2014 to include Americans. That was, and is, controversial but is unlikely to be changed now.