Salman Rushdie Snubbed By Man Booker Committee

Posted on September 11, 2008

Literary circles are abuzz over the Man Booker's vicious snub of Salman Rushdie. His novel, The Enchantress of Florence, didn't make the short-list for the prize. The committee is unapologetic about its decision.

Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence was simply not a good enough book to make it past the longlist stage of this year's Booker prize, according to the chair of judges, Michael Portillo. To add insult to the double Booker of Booker winner's injured pride, Portillo added that the judges didn't even spend that much time discussing it.
"I can say that the discussions we had about Salman Rushdie, as with all the other books, was a discussion about the book and not about the author. It was about the merits of the book," he told guardian.co.uk after the press conference at which the shortlist was announced. "In the opinion of these five people taken together, Salman Rushdie's was not one of the top six books for us. We didn't have a huge debate about it."

Well, my goodness. Michael Portillo (a former Conservative MP and cabinet minister) isn't going to win any awards for diplomacy, that's for sure. Perhaps he forgot he was chairing the Man Booker prize and thought he was campaigning against the Labour party. Here is the shortlist:

Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (Atlantic)

Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber)

Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (John Murray)

Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago)

Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency (Fourth Estate)

Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole (Hamish Hamilton)