The interesting thing about each Indian attempt is that the odds werent against any of them. Seths A Suitable Boy was rated as the darkest horse of the lot by Londons bookies, who considered it a mere 5 to 1 shot. Rushdie was difficult to place The Moors Last Sigh was a hot favourite, but nobody had ever won the Booker twice.
The odds finally settled down in the week before the announcement at 3 to 1 against.
With Mistry, a fine balance was struck the bookies considered him a better bet than Seamus Deane and Beryl Bainbridge, almost Graham Swifts equal and a notch lower than Margaret Atwood.
The Times Literary Supplement had tipped the well-known Canadian writer Atwood as this years heavyweight contender. Atwood seemed set to pull it off with Alias Grace, a dark novel about schizophrenia and a servant girl in Elizabethan times.
Alias Grace was certainly rated higher than Graham Swifts Last Orders, the book that won the Booker. In essence, its a morbid novel about a butcher whose friends have gathered together to follow his last wishes with respect to his mortal remains. Swifts book had received mutedly enthusiastic reviews, with some critics praising his virtuoso technique and others saying that it was nothing more than a perfect five-finger exercise on paper.
Bainbridge was not considered a serious contender, chiefly because of the subject matter of Every Man For Himself a fictional recreation of the last four days of the Titanic. Bainbridge did an excellent job on a subject eagerly embraced by such authors as Jeffrey Archer and Danielle Steele, but not a job, it was felt, that was literary enough.
Also Read
Comments Peter Arendt, Dean of Comparative Literature at SUNY, Buffalo: The Booker attempts to reward good technique as much as good storytelling Ben Okri was a nod to magic realism, Roddy Doyle got it for his use of the narrative voice. Swift constructs narratives, as opposed to writing books. Last Orders is an excellent piece of work, but it is a difficult book to read I almost said text there. It would hold much more appeal for the average academic than for the average member of the reading public.
For India, this is a bit like the Miss Universe title having won it once, it seems axiomatic that well place in the last ten each year, even if we never make it to the victory podium again. Theres a wild rumour in publishing circles abroad that next years entrant will be this years media darling, Arundhati Roy. (The lady herself has a different take on the subject: This time next year, Ill be yesterdays news. Therell be some other sensation and everyone will leave me in peace.)
If not her, the attitude runs, theres bound to be someone else.
It would take a serious case of writers cramp in the subcontinent to keep an Indian-born author off the shortlist in 1997. I wonder what it would take to get the bookies to offer a 1 to 3 return on the native.