Who's Afraid Of Rushdie?

The five judges arrived for their final meeting apparently convinced Rushdie would win—The Moor's Last Sigh had the best odds ever in Booker history. It was in the last hour of their argument that the tide turned in favour of Barker's The Ghost Road—the third novel in a trilogy on World War I. By the end of the secret session, says The Times, only George Walden, Tory MP and chairman of the judges' panel, was championing Rushdie's novel. Asked if the best book had won, he replied: "The committee's choice has won."

Rushdie's book—which is about a cartoonist who rises to become the leader of a fascist movement in India—had been described by critics here as another slice of Indian "magic realism". The response of Auberon Waugh, editor of The Literary Review, is typical. He admits he has not read The Moor's Last Sigh or the other five books shortlisted for the award but insists that a man who has been chased "from pillar to post by religious maniacs" deserved victory.

The headlines in the run-up to the award were along the lines of 'Rushdie's the one to beat'. The Guardian's story on the award was captioned: 'Barker beats Rushdie'. Rushdie, on his part, complimented Barker: "She's an excellent writer and deserves to win." Rushdie said he had not expected to win: "Lightning doesn't strike twice." All attention is now focused on Ms Barker's book.

The Ghost Road, coming after Regeneration (published in 1991) and The Eye in the Door (1993), essentially portrays the trauma of a soldier in World War I. Though much has been written about the war and the heroism of the soldiers, few have looked at the war, critics said, from the perspective of the deformities it induces in the personalities of the soldiers.

It's a work about soldiers who are scared, who have hallucinations, who are treated by psychiatrists and again packed off to the front, soldiers who—while brutalised by their experiences—can still retain tenderness in their relationships. Barker, who delved into the archives of Criaglockhart War Hospital outside Edinburgh and travelled to France for her research, says her grandfather was an inspiration for the book. As a child, she says, she sometimes put a finger in the hole her grandfather had from a bayonet injury in the war.

Once a supply teacher, Barker attended a writing course at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire where author Angela Carter encouraged her. In her early writing career, she concentrated on women's issues.

The Booker Prize, it is said, is somewhat like a lottery. Besides the recognition and the award money it brings, sales shoot up and the book sells anywhere between 5,000 to 4,00,000 copies. That publishers size up the potential market in case an author's work makes it to the Booker Prize is well illustrated in the case of Martin Amis' The Information, for which he had received £500,000 as advance from publishers HarperCollins. It so happened that the book was not included in the five novels shortlisted for the Booker.

The bookstore Watersone's once offered a hefty discount to customers buying a novel from the Booker shortlist. The Information, earlier priced at £15.95, was on offer for £5. But they were obviously backing what turned out to be the wrong horse. All part of the game in big business.

And, as always, the award also becomes an occasion for sceptics to question the very rationale of such awards on the ground that the hype and publicity around the award tends to consign the bulk of the authors to the side alleys and lionises the work of those shortlisted or awarded. But then, such is the case with all awards.