Literary London

MUKUND PADMANABHAN jots down random impressions of the City during the Booker season.

THE view couldn't be better from Melvyn Bragg's 20-something floor London Weekend Television office. From the height, the traffic on Waterloo bridge seems to flow as languidly as the Thames. The handsome vista of the Victoria Embankment, dominated by the palladian stateliness of Somerset House, is directly across. The dome of St. Paul's is visible away on the right. And along the South Bank towards the left, the London Eye stares vacantly at the river - an incongruous, but arresting, piece of neo-modernism stuck boldly into a landscape of classicism.

Bragg loves the view too, as well he might. But I doubt if he has much time to stand around and drink it in. He is a man of many parts: author, television producer, talk-show host and lately a politician, having been nominated to the House of Lords by his friend Tony Blair.

I have caught Lord Melvyn on a busy day. Later in the evening, he is to fly to Israel to interview Amos Oz. Are you going to talk about literature or politics, I ask. "I haven't made up my mind," he says. "But given the current situation there, it would be somewhat odd not to talk politics. What do you think?

* * *

But this is London in the Booker season and the conversation quickly turns to the prize. In a few days, Bragg will present the live television programme of the Booker award ceremony. His association with the award goes back earlier than most people are aware. A little less than two decades ago, when he much younger, much less well-known and associated with the BBC, Bragg had suggested that the award ceremony be televised live.

Television played a huge role in making the prize what it is - raising it from relative obscurity to a level where it is impossible to ignore. It lent the prize a dash of glamour, sharpened its image as a literary horse race and got Britain's bookmakers interested enough to modify the odds by the day. In Britain, the Booker Prize ceremony is the literary equivalent of the Oscars - a show for the thinking man's couch potato.

Bragg appears a little bored of presenting it though. He thinks the awards function has become somewhat formulaic and reckons this will be the last time he plays host to it.

Bragg refuses to pick this year's winner, but the bookmakers have already made up their minds. A couple of days before the announcement of the award, Margaret Atwood has left the field behind - the odds on her having been narrowed by Ladbrokes to 11 to 8. Kazuo Ishiguro, the other favourite, is a distant 1 to 4.

* * *

In a way, Booker Prize 2000 is a relatively unexciting contest. There is no major novel in the fray - no Midnight's Children or The God Of Small Things to showcase to the book-buying world.

The inclusion of Zadie Smith's fiercely intelligent White Teeth would have added a dash of sparkle. But the panel of judges inexplicably left her out of the shortlist. Invariably, most forecasts about the likely winner have little to with novelistic merit.

Those who think Atwood will walk away with the cheque suspect the judges will be swayed by the fact she's been short-listed on three earlier occasions. The sympathy factor works the opposite way, or so it is perceived, for Kazuo Ishiguro. By many accounts, When We Were Orphans, which is inspired by the 1930s English detective novel, is Ishiguro's most accomplished work yet. But having won the Booker for The Remains Of The Day in 1989, bagging a double is a tough ask.

* * *

The dark horse is little known Trezza Azzopardi. She's young, of foreign descent and fairly nice to look at - all of which may weigh in her favour according to experienced Booker watchers. Moreover, The Hiding Place is her first novel and nothing pleases a panel of judges more than honouring its own discovery with an award.

The Hiding Place is immaculately written; Azzopardi's quiet and carefully modulated voice rarely falters as she takes you through her despondent tale of childhood and family feuding. But, in the end, the book leaves me disappointed. Just as I hope the novel will knit itself into a tight and satisfying conclusion, it ends on a inconclusive and fragmentary note. I don't expect her to win but place œ5 on her at Ladbrokes anyway. We both lose.

* * *

Fay Weldon invites me to lunch. I am not sure why (and still don't quite know) but I drop everything and grab the offer. She and her husband Nick Cox live in a quiet and leafy part of Hampstead. As I head towards her home, I notice she is featured in the morning's newspapers. The Sunday Telegraph runs a sharp and well-rounded short story by her commissioned in connection with Guy Fawkes Day. She is also quoted in on shopping and lifestyle in the Independent. I draw her attention to this and she waves dismissively: "Oh, I speak too much nowadays."

Fay was the chairperson of the Booker panel in 1983. It was the year that J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K pipped Salman Rushdie's Shame at the post. " I don't think she has ever forgiven me for this," she jests. When Rushdie was served with the Iranian fatwa, Weldon was at the forefront of defending the beleaguered writer. "It was the right thing to do," she says matter of factly.

* * *

Fay guesses (correctly) that Atwood will win this year even though she believes The Blind Assassin is not her best novel. Weldon's new novel, The Rhode Island Blues, didn't make the short-list but is vanishing off the bookracks. She's just discovered that two bookstores don't have the books any longer on their shelves, unhappy about their absence but distinctly pleased that they sold out.

I tell her about how popular her novels were during my years in university, particularly with feminist women students, and she is pleased. She is a jovial woman, self-assured and comfortable within herself. I take to her. Over lunch, at the Italian restaurant round the corner, the conversation is as smooth and warming as the grappa. Once or twice, her husband interjects to gently tell me that something or the other is "not for the newspaper". But these are the only occasions I am reminded that I am a journalist. Back at her house, I am presented with two signed hardbacks before I leave.

* * *

A few hours before the award is actually announced, the folks at Bloomsbury, which published The Blind Assassin, are quietly rejoicing. Atwood is the runaway favourite by now. I am there to meet a lady who markets the publishing house's childrens books (and this includes J.K. Rowling four-volume Potter series.) "The staff is really excited," she tells me. "It does look like Atwood, doesn't it?".

Atwood comes through. It would have been a lot more fun for me had Ishiguro won though. I am invited to the post-Booker award party thrown for the novelist by his publishers, Faber and Faber. Earlier, Lee Brackstone, Faber's young and charming Fiction Editor had promised: "If Ishiguro wins, we will all be a lot more drunk."

Still, the party goes well and carries on until the early hours of the morning. If Ishiguro is disappointed, he does not show it.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Back to basics
Next     : Victor Hugo: then and now