MAN BOOKER PRIZE-2016 WON BY AMERICAN AUTHOR PAUL BEATTY

MAN BOOKER PRIZE-2016 WON BY AMERICAN AUTHOR PAUL BEATTY

മാന്‍ ബുക്കര്‍ പ്രൈസ് അമേരിക്കന്‍ സാഹിത്യകാരന്‍ പോള്‍ ബീറ്റിക്ക്

Paul Beatty has become the first American writer to win the Man Booker prize, for a caustic satire on US racial politics that judges said put him up there with Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift.The 54-year-old Los Angeles-born writer won for The Sellout, a laugh-out-loud novel whose main character wants to assert his African American identity by, outrageously and transgressively, bringing back slavery and segregation.Beatty has admitted readers might find it a difficult book to digest but the historian Amanda Foreman, who chaired this year’s judging panel, said that was no bad thing.

“Fiction should not be comfortable,” Foreman said. “The truth is rarely pretty and this is a book that nails the reader to the cross with cheerful abandon … that is why the novel works“While you’re being nailed, you’re being tickled. It is highwire act which he pulls off with tremendous verve and energy and confidence. He never once lets up or pulls his punches. This is somebody writing at the top of their game.”Foreman called it a “novel for our times”, particularly in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The Sellout is one of those very rare books: which is able to take satire, which is a very difficult subject and not always done well, and plunges it into the heart of contemporary American society with a savage wit of the kind I haven’t seen since Swift or Twain.“It manages to eviscerate every social taboo and politically correct nuance, every sacred cow. While making us laugh, it also makes us wince. It is both funny and painful at the same time.”

The £50,000 win, announced at a black tie dinner at London’s Guildhall, represented a particular success for Beatty’s publisher Oneworld, a small independent that also represented last year’s winner Marlon James and his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings.Beatty was overcome by emotion as he accepted the award. He told the audience: “I don’t want to get all dramatic, like writing saved my life ... but writing has given me a life.”

At a short press conference afterwards he said winning meant a lot, that he was as “happy as hell”. He did not call his book a satire, he said, but was happy for it be described that way.The book may be set for success across the world, but Beatty, who said he was told by one of his college professors that he would never be a success as a writer, said it was not something he enjoyed. “I don’t like writing. It’s hard. You’ve got to sit down ... I’m a perfectionist, I guess, and I get easily disgruntled and discouraged with what I’m doing. I am really hard with myself and I tend to sabotage myself, but when I’m writing I try not to do that, I try to be in the moment, to be confident.”Anyone offended by early Richard Pryor might think twice about reading The Sellout. There is lots of swearing and frequent use of the n-word.But Beatty says in the book that being offended is not an emotion. “That’s his answer to the readers and I would say the same,” said Foreman.

Judges took almost four hours to reach what Foreman said was a unanimous decision. While it was something of a bookmakers’ outside bet – Ladbrokes offered odds of 6/1 – it had been tipped by many pundits and was adored by most critics with the Guardian’s critic calling it “daring and abrasive” and “a joy to read.”The Wall Street Journal called it a “Swiftian satire of the highest order. Like someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre, Mr Beatty has whispered ‘Racism’ in a postracial world”.The books losing out on the prize were Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (US), Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien (Canada), All That Man Is by David Szalay (Canada-UK), His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) and Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (UK).

Beatty, who lives in New York, is the first American to win in the prize’s 48-year history and it comes three years after eligibility rules were changed to allow writers of any nationality writing in the English language and being published in the UK.Sales for all six books have already increased significantly, particularly for His Bloody Project, published by the tiny Scottish crime imprint Contraband.Frances Gertler, web editor at Foyles bookshops, said The Sellout was brave and funny. “It takes a bit of getting into but once there, you don’t want to leave. A smart satire with a memorable narrator.”Foreman’s fellow judges this year, who have waded through 155 books over 10 months, were the critic and lecturer Jon Day, novelist and academic Abdulrazak Gurnah, poet and academic David Harsent and the actor Olivia Williams.Foreman said the criteria used by judges in deciding the winner were: aesthetic, quality and depth of ideas, the craftsmanship of the writing and whether it transported the reader.Beatty, the author of three previous novels and two books of poetry, was presented with his trophy by the Duchess of Cornwall.

ഈ വര്‍ഷത്തെ മാന്‍ ബുക്കര്‍ പുരസ്കാരം അമേരിക്കന്‍ സാഹിത്യകാരന്‍ പോള്‍ ബീറ്റിക്ക്. ബീറ്റിയുടെ ‘ദ സെല്‍ഒൗട്ട്’ എന്ന കൃതിക്കാണ് പുരസ്കാരം. ഇംഗ്ളീഷ് ഭാഷയിലുള്ള കൃതികള്‍ക്ക് നല്‍കുന്ന ഏറ്റവും വലിയ പുരസ്കാരം ആദ്യമായാണ് അമേരിക്കന്‍ സാഹിത്യകാരനെ തേടിയത്തെുന്നത്.
അമേരിക്കയിലെ വംശീയ രാഷ്ട്രീയത്തെ അതിരൂക്ഷമായി വിമര്‍ശിക്കുന്ന കൃതി ഒരേ സമയം ഞെട്ടിപ്പിക്കുന്നതും ആക്ഷേപഹാസ്യത്തിന്‍െറ കൂരമ്പുകള്‍ തൊടുക്കുന്നതുമാണെന്ന് ജൂറി അഭിപ്രായപ്പെട്ടു. വളരെ അപൂര്‍വമായ കൃതിയെന്ന് വിലയിരുത്തപ്പെട്ട ‘ദ സെല്‍ഒൗട്ട്’ സമകാലിക അമേരിക്കന്‍ രാഷ്ട്രീയസാഹചര്യങ്ങളെ നര്‍മോക്തിയോടെ വിമര്‍ശിക്കുന്നതില്‍ വിജയിച്ചു. മാര്‍ക് ട്വയിനും ജൊനാഥന്‍ സ്വിഫ്റ്റിനും ശേഷം ആക്ഷേപഹാസ്യത്തെ ഇത്ര സമര്‍ഥമായി ഉപയോഗപ്പെടുത്തിയത് പോള്‍ ബീറ്റിയെയാണെന്ന് ജൂറി പാനല്‍ അംഗമായ ഫോര്‍മാന്‍ ചൂണ്ടിക്കാട്ടി.
50,000 പൗണ്ടാണ് (40.8 ലക്ഷത്തോളം രൂപ) പുരസ്കാര തുക. മെഡലെയ്ന്‍ തെയ്നിമന്‍െറ ഡുനോട്ട് സേ വി ഹാവ് നതിങ് ഉള്‍പ്പെടെ അഞ്ചു നോവലുകളെ പിന്തള്ളിയാണ് ദ സെല്‍ഒൗട്ട് പുരസ്കാരം നേടിയത്. ഗ്രേമി മാക്രെയുടെ ', ഡിബോറ ലെവിയുടെ 'ഹോട്ട് മില്‍ക്', ഒട്ടേസ മോസ്ഫെഗിന്‍െറ 'ഐലീന്‍', ഡേവിഡ് സ്ലാലൈയുടെ 'ഓള്‍ ദാറ്റ് മാന്‍ ഈസ്' എന്നിവയാണ് അവസാന റൗണ്ടിലത്തെിയ മറ്റു നോവലുകള്‍. സ്ളംബര്‍ലാന്‍ഡ്, ടഫ്, ദ വൈറ്റ്ബോയ് ഷഫ്ള്‍ എന്നിവയാണ് പോള്‍ ബീറ്റിയുടെ മറ്റു കൃതികള്‍.

Prof. John Kurakar