Man Booker: Embracing A New Language, Casting Expressions In A Different Mold

One look at Man Booker 2014 finalists, and you would see it has fairly accommodated British writers, with a dash of American writers, with a hint of an Australian writer, and a Scottish one – just to keep the flavours from bursting out too loud. This year, Man Booker organisers had said once that the list was getting as ‘diverse’ as it can.

While English as a language has been traversing through unknown terrains, appropriating expressions from native hinterlands as its own, gaining newer dimensions, the competition between genuine vs borrowed is getting even hotter.

Indian-origin Neel Mukherjee, who is more aptly called a British citizen, has made a cut. And so has Tasmania’s Richard Flanagan. Ali Smith’s How to be both and Joshua Ferris’ To Rise Again at a Decent Hour make it to the list too. American authors Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler have been sending joy-waves through their country’s literary clubs. Diversity, did we hear?

Two major publishing houses who are allies now, are responsible for five of the six publications in the shortlist. Now, now, now…that’s called an eye for talent and a surefire shot at picking writers who are certain to grab the headlines. Because, once a Booker finalist, is always a celebrated writer!

In any case, this year’s finalists pack some genuine expressions in their works. English has been a language that has been some sort of a laboratory for experiment of expressions. A writer is often in search of newer expressions to transfer the sum of his experiences.

Whether it is Neel Mukherjee’s family saga set in Kolkata in the 1960s, or Flangan focusing on Australian PoWs being used as forced labour on the Burma Death Railway, or Jacobson’s for his ‘J’ where flitting images of past and the progressive imagination of those phases create a dangerous concoction of schemas – English as a language has surely been reaching its potential since long.

With three British writers, two Americans and an Australian to keep the scale from tipping against the intent of the Booker Committee which had said it would open doors to writers of any nationality in its over four and half decades of history. There is another perspective to the works that are being selected for the shortlist of Man Booker prize 2014. When you look at the works, they are varied and not really set in the ‘English’ identity. Some jar as works, some simply mesmerise.

Opening Booker doors to English writers from other nationalities like India was to introduce more character into the works dealing with fractured consciousness till late. Will this prompt writers from other languages to turn towards English?

After all, no matter how recluse a writer is; who does not want his/her works to cross the borders of his country and be accessed by millions and millions who are looking for some fresh expressions? Why not? Literature is, after all, a medium to change minds, to wipe out biases, to incite feelings that may help empathy. In the war torn borders, and the ever tense world that’s chasing some elusive happiness, a writer is an artist who can create newer spaces in the minds of the reader.

Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others sounds like he has borrowed the title from a film. The experience that’s transferred from his work is close to the experience that all countries in transition from old to new are facing. It’s relevant across the geographical borders.

If Mukherjee manages to win the title and take home the purse of £ 72,000, Kolkata will yet again be the final word on literature from India that could be represented in the west. It would further encourage more and more writers who could have found expressions in their mother-tongue which happens to be Bengali, to think, speak and write in English.

Will Man Booker do any good to authors and winners? It’s always a double edged sword that is bound to cut both ways. An author who nurses the ambition of reaching far and beyond, high and higher, prizes like Man Booker do hold a lot of promise.

It is difficult to say whether the Man Booker Foundation opened gates first to authors of different nationalities writing in English, or the authors claimed the space first and Man Booker Committee merely acknowledged the fact that literary works in English were coming mostly from people who were from different identities than the ones who were conventionally considered eligible.

In an egg first or chicken, kind of situation the loss may be more than evident in the coming years. By opening gates, Man Booker may stand to gain a lot with works from different nationalities pouring into its quarters, but what would be ruined is the writers writing in their mother tongue. That would be a death blow to some native languages.