Literary Awards - Are We Honouring The Author Or The Work?

So Shappi Khorsandi has withdrawn her novel ‘Nina Is Not Ok’ from the shortlist of the inaugural Jhalak Prize, saying she “felt like my skin colour was up for the award rather than my book”. The Jhalak is a new honour, set up by Sunny Singh, someone I know from my time studying at London’s Metropolitan University. This author and tutor also chairs the prize which is intended to celebrate Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) authors annually.

But her initiative has gotten off to a shaky start. Not only has Singh excoriated major publishers for their “shockingly low” number of submissions, but one of the dozen books shortlisted appears to have been entered against the wishes of its author. I have the greatest respect for Khorsandi’s decision, it makes sense she wants the audience for a novel that focusses on teenage alcoholism (rather than issues of national or ethnic identity) to be as broad as possible. But Shappi is a successful (and brilliant) stand up comedian, as well as a gifted writer, she can afford to pick and choose the kind of publicity she receives for her work. Don’t forget, some established awards decide who wins on the basis of arbitrary criteria too, with the Baileys’ Prize only open to female authors. I’d be very surprised if anyone withdrew from that shortlist on the basis that their novel was entirely about men. Such is the risk when you make a prize about the innate characteristics of authors, not the subject matter of their books.

Of course, the Jhalak was started with the best of intentions, its financing provided by an anonymous benefactor and perhaps inspired by the success of the Goldsmiths’ Prize for fiction, launched in 2013. The latter immediately brought Eimear McBride’s terrific debut ‘A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing’ to a wider audience after her publisher, tiny independent Galley Beggar Press, took a chance on a ‘challenging’ work the author had been hawking around an uninterested literary industry for nine years. But the Goldsmiths Prize has a clear remit; one that rewards experimental work, fiction which “opens up new possibilities in the novel form”. For the judges it doesn’t matter whether the award is won by a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, as long as the work they submit is ground-breaking. Indeed, the 2016 prize went to Mike McCormack, a straight, white, middle class man of the type often derogated as somehow being responsible for the likes of Brexit and Trump. But such pigeonholing isn’t relevant to the artistic life, and McCormack’s single-sentence epic ‘Solar Bones’ remains a work of fiction very much at the cutting edge.

We know the Goldsmiths Prize ignores fiction that feels too conformist, but if an award isn’t clear about the books that should be entered there’s the potential for controversy. With the Jhalak setting its requirements so broadly, in theory any published writer from a BAME background could apply. This would mean the likes of Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie and perhaps even Kazuo Ishiguro in the running, authors whose focus is likely to be on bigger game, the Booker or Costa. As Singh noted acerbically after receiving ‘Swing Time’ as one of her initial 51 entries, “I don’t think Zadie Smith needs the exposure”. Well, no, but if you haven’t made clear her world-famous, overly-hyped ilk aren’t welcome at your ceremony, why wouldn’t her publisher submit?

Other nominees for the inaugural Jhalak include the former children’s laureate Malorie Blackmann and David Olusoga, a man whose non-fiction work ‘Black and British: A Forgotten History’ forms a prestigious BBC series. Neither of these nominees is in desperate need of the exposure, unlike the more obscure names on the shortlist such as short story specialist Irenosen Okoije or Japanese – British – Chinese - American novelist Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. Up-and-coming talents haven’t the luxury of refusing acclaim for their work, not when they’re trying to build a successful career. I’m sure Okoije and Buchanan’s representatives wouldn’t have reacted too well had they tried to withdraw their books. No doubt both of these authors would prefer to compete outside genre, ethnic group or gender; to be judged simply on the quality of their prose, but the sheer volume of books out there makes such methods difficult. Sometimes you have to narrow the field, even if it results in the kind of pigeonholing Shappi Khorsandi wanted no part of.

These awards can be expensive for publishers to enter, particularly small presses, and the overheads rise exponentially if an author is shortlisted. But the boost on winning ought to be huge, as illustrated by OneWorld’s triumph at the last two Bookers, with ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’ and ‘The Sellout’ taking the prize for an independent publisher started at a kitchen table on an Amstrad computer.

Indeed, through recent years the Booker has grown to become a kind of global phenomenon. I’m all in favour of the best books from around the world being highlighted, something that has upped the quality for readers and hopefully will ensure underwhelming novels like ‘Amsterdam’ or ‘The Finkler Question’ don’t win in the future. But it must be a nightmare for the judges, having to assess hundreds of works over a short period. When set against these blanket submissions, a niche prize can shed light on talent that doesn’t make it into the spotlight otherwise. But the risk is that numerous awards water down the reward that once came for a winner with the ever-rising number of ceremonies. A win could result in scant extra sales when such prizes are being given out every couple of weeks.

I’m sure the Jhalak Prize will survive these teething troubles and become one of the essential events of the literary calendar, but maybe its entry criteria need to be refined next time. Khorsandi floated the idea of altering the rules to focus on unpublished writers, but the amount of work involved in sifting through manuscripts from authors of all abilities probably makes this unworkable. Khorsandi is of Iranian heritage herself and has said she feels more akin to Caucasian immigrants from Eastern Europe than second generation Brits with an African heritage, for example. Maybe this points another way forward, to a literary prize for residents who are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. That way there’s no focus on skin colour.

However it proceeds I hope the Jhalak endudes, because anything aimed at pushing the work of writers from overlooked backgrounds ought to be welcomed, especially when it’s so difficult for many authors to earn a living from their work. By dint of my background, I would love to see something more focussed on working class writers, without recourse to questions of gender or race. But administering this would be problematic, such a prize couldn’t have a genteel Hampstead millionaire winning on the basis their latest book delved into the world of the impoverished. Neither could we measure a writer’s ‘salt-of-the-earth’ credentials from their current circumstances. Some may have had a comfortable upbringing but been reduced to penury in pursuit of their creative dream and still remain unfamiliar with ‘working class culture’. Others could have grown up impoverished, worked hard in another field to rise out of it and now live a comfortable existence, one that finally allows them to write the working class novel they always had in them. Does that make their book a contender or not?

No, as nice as this idea is in theory, it isn’t going to happen. With class identities shifting all the time, people of all nationalities settling into fresh cultures amid the gender fluid and those from a complex racial background, the more ‘niche’ an attempt to highlight overlooked minorities, the more difficult it becomes. Writers can’t second guess judges who don’t see our world with the same boundaries as they do. I wish the inaugural Jhalak Prize every success, but as with the furore over 2016’s #Oscarsowhite, I wonder if the solution to lack of acclaim involves cordoning off sections of humanity into additional categories. Or highlighting perceived differences between people based purely on the accident of their birthplace and skin colour as Khorsandi puts it. I suspect it doesn’t.