Mantel is Booker Frontrunner

Short of a bedroom imbroglio, what else can ever thrust an esteemed author of literary fiction onto the front pages?

Aberrant behaviour at the bookies it seems! There has been a huge rush of Booker wagers on just one of the longlisted author, Hilary Mantel. 95% of the bets have been for her novel Wolf Hall. Bookies William Hill said that it had never seen a betting pattern like it and slashed the odds on a win for Mantel's longlisted Wolf Hall from 12-1 right down to 2-1.

But of course, a Booker win for Mantel is not a dead-cert, says Boyd Tonkin at The Independent. And any Booker winner will know that the front-runner often fall long before the finish line. But says Tonkin :

Anyone who frets at this vulgar intrusion of cash and chance into the august enclosures of literature should read Wolf Hall at once. Closer in style and mood to Tom Wolfe than Walter Scott, Mantel's racy and rocketing account of Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power at the court of Henry VIII stitches a canny materialism deep into the fabric of the new, rational and businesslike, England that Cromwell did so much to create. Indeed, she takes care to specify one trait among the other qualities that make her Putney blacksmith's son such a stellar arbitrator, plotter, trader, deal-closer and all-round fixer for the crown. "He will take a bet on anything." And so will we.

It was the only Booker longlisted title I managed to find at Kinokuniya the other day (though I'm assured all the titles will be in soon) so I guess my Booker read starts here. Having enjoyed Beyond Black, I'm anticipating this read with great pleasure.

The Lingering Chill of Rushdie's Fatwa

How far has the fall-out from the fatwa chilled the literary muse in Britain? asks Boyd Tonkin in The Independent today, the latest in a succession of writers to consider the knock-on effects ahead of the twentieth anniversary on February 14th. He finds ;

From time to time, extreme reactions from self-appointed guardians of faith do hint at a tinder-box mood of outrage without and caution within.

Other authors also contribute their views, including Hanif Kureishi :

One of the effects of Obama is that people are more aware that the white phase is over. In the future, we'll all be in nations made up of a number of minorities. Everything is going to have to be argued for: questions of language, honour and insult. Literature is the space where all of this can be taken seriously and thought about deeply... The problem is, if you become too respectful, there's no real contact...

and Suhayl Saadi :

The Rushdie Affair was a wholly negative phenomenon... It empowered both Islamism and liberal imperialism and set up the "straw man" dualism in which, globally, writers of Muslim origin are perpetually expected to display loyalty to one or other of these extremist positions... All novels are political, but this book became a political football in which the only winners were the hooligans.

Karma Chameleon

The Independent Foreign Fiction award this year has been won by Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa for The Book of Chameleons. The £10,000 prize money will be shared by the author and Daniel Hahn who translated the novel from the Portuguese.

According to Boyd Tonkin in the Independent:

The novel mixes comedy, tragedy and touches of fantasy as it explores the recent history of the former Portuguese colony, whose independence in 1975 was followed by more than 20 years of bloody civil war.

Its hero, an albino African called Felix Ventura, works as a "genealogist" who fabricates a "better past" for ambitious clients haunted by previous traumas. He shares his adventures, memories and dreams with the novel's narrator: a gecko who observes the action from the walls of Felix's house.

One of this year's judges, David Constantine, describes the novel as:

... a beautiful fiction. It has grace, agility, wit, a lovely inventiveness.

Homage to the Art of Translators

The longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced, and as Boyd Tonkin says, it has never looked richer, or broader.

Tonkin pays homage both to the "protean art" of fiction:

... as practised from Berlin (by Jenny Erpenbeck) to Buenos Aries (by Edgardo Cozarinsky). Power and its abuses come under cool, satirical scrutiny from Angola (José Eduardo Agualusa) to Albania (Ismail Kadare). Family stories bring joy and sorrow, comedy and tragedy, from Austria (Eva Menasse) to Iran (Kader Abdolah). Mysteries from the past demand solutions from the present in Cuba (Leonardo Padura) or Italy (Niccolò Ammaniti). Individuals face life-defining moments of crisis and discovery in Norway (Linn Ullmann) or Afghanistan (Atiq Rahimi). And this world in flux takes shape via fictional forms as vastly varied as the street-smart Parisian rap of Faïza Guène or the epic, and self-translated, African fable of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. With this list, an entire planet of fiction swings into view.

and to the skill of the translators, noting that the chosen novels:

... are without exception, powerful books carried into English on powerful shoulders.

The prize is unique among literary award in that it rewards both novelist and translator equally.

The judges had one dilemma this year. The prize honours living novelists. What were they then to do with the highly acclaimed Suite Francaise by Irene Némirovsky? The author died in Auschwitz in 1942, but the novel lay undiscovered in a trunk for over 60 years.

It was decided in the end to give the novel a special commendation so that it could stand:

... above the battle ... and in a class of its own.

Here's the longlist with links to follow:

My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdolah and translated by Susan Massotty
The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa and translated by Daniel Hahn
Steal You Away by Niccolò Ammaniti and translated by Jonathan Hunt
The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas and translated by Anne McLean
The Moldavian Pimp by Edgardo Cozarinsky and translated by Nick Caistor
The Story of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist and translated by Tina Nunnally
The Old Child by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Susan Bernofsky
Just Like Tomorrow by Faïza Guène and translated by Sarah Adams
Four Walls by Vangelis Hatziyannidis translated by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife
The Successor by Ismail Kadare and translated by David Bellos
Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian and translated by Flora Drew
Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream by Javier Marías and translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Vienna by Eva Menasse and translated by Anthea Bell
Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and translated by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Havana Black by Leonardo Padura and translated by Peter Bush
A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by Atiq Rahimi and translated by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari
Seeing by José Saramago and translated by Margaret Jull Costa
The Gaze by Elif Shafak and translated by Brendan Freely
Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad and translated by Sverre Lyngstad
Grace by Linn Ullmann and translated by Barbara Haveland