The Regurgitated Read
No surprise that Tom Rob Smith’s Stalin-era thriller didn’t make it to the Booker Prize shortlist: judges always sneer at genre fiction, especially if it’s fun to read. Shocking that Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, probably the best-reviewed book of the season, was left out. The bookies are reeling from the exclusion of Netherland, and of The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. I’m not complaining.
John Crace has chewed up the six shortlisted novels and spat them out into Digested Reads.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh: “Deeti chewed on a mouthful of roti as she ground the poppies. “I must be in the book that ticks the historical, multi-layered, multicultural shortlist box,” she said. “In which case,” her husband replied, “I had better hurry up and die so that you can show off your research about the Opium Wars and sail away from Calcutta on board the Ibis with a cast of colourful characters who will use wilfully obscure and caricatured language that the judges will fall over themselves to call a tour de force of comic invention.” “You’re right,” Deeti agreed. “And the best thing is I don’t even need an ending as it’s only the first in a trilogy.””
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