D J Taylor
A High Wire Act
The exact circumstances of D B C Pierre’s triumph in the 2003 Man Booker Prize were these. The five-strong judging panel convened for its long-listing meeting sometime in the middle of August. The opinions expressed at this preliminary get-together are usually fairly tentative: the judges are still getting to know the novels under discussion; a mild preference is generally as far as it goes. Here, by contrast, unprecedented communal fervour prevailed. One after another, four of the five judges shuffled their notes before them and exclaimed that they had read this terrific novel called Vernon God Little about the US Columbine High School shootings and…
The fifth judge – myself – was unconvinced. Once set in motion, however, this particular literary juggernaut was unstoppable. At the short-list meeting, a month later, each of the dozen books that merited serious consideration was rated inversely out of twelve, one being the highest mark available. D B C
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Delighted to make my debut in @Lit_Review with a review of Philip Short's heavyweight new bio, Putin: His Life and Times
(Yes, it's behind a paywall, but newspapers and magazines need to earn money too...)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/vlad-the-invader
'As we examined more and more data from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters ... we were amazed to find that there is almost never a case for permanently moving people out of the contaminated area after a big nuclear accident.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying
'This problem has dogged Labour’s efforts to become the "natural party of government", a sobriquet which the Conservatives have acquired over decades, despite their far less compelling record of achievement.'
Charles Clarke on Labour's civil wars.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/comrade-versus-comrade