:00:34. > :00:41.We will find out who has won one of the world's most important and most
:00:42. > :00:47.famous literary prizes, the Man Booker. Welcome to all of you, it
:00:48. > :00:52.has been quite a journey to get to this point, the judges considered
:00:53. > :00:58.155 book, they were whittled down to a long list of 13, a the short list
:00:59. > :01:03.of six and tonight, there will be one book left, just one winner. This
:01:04. > :01:08.is a real highlight of the literary calendar, 500 guests have been
:01:09. > :01:12.enjoying a champagne reception and three course dinner and among them
:01:13. > :01:16.the six writers short listed for the prize this year. What a
:01:17. > :01:21.nervewracking evening it must be for them, waiting nervously to find out
:01:22. > :01:26.if they have won and who knows, even beginning to think about the ?50,000
:01:27. > :01:32.cheque that goes with winning. And, we have a royal guest with us
:01:33. > :01:37.tonight as well. Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall will present
:01:38. > :01:40.the toy to the winner. To help guide its through the proceedings I am
:01:41. > :01:48.delighted to say we are joined by two former judges.
:01:49. > :01:50.Joining me to discuss this year's nominees are two former judges,
:01:51. > :01:52.Sarah Churchwell, who is a professor of public humanities
:01:53. > :01:54.and American iterature at the University of London,
:01:55. > :02:00.Much to discuss, I am looking forward to it. But before that, let
:02:01. > :02:03.us remind you who is on this year's the short list.
:02:04. > :02:09.This year the six nominees are, The sell-out by Paul Beatty, about a
:02:10. > :02:13.young black man in Los Angeles who decides to reinstate slavery and
:02:14. > :02:17.racial segregation, his bloody project by Graeme Macrae Burnet, it
:02:18. > :02:23.tells the story of three bluetle -- brutal murders in the Scottish
:02:24. > :02:29.Highlands. Hot Milk explores the toxic relation Shep between a mother
:02:30. > :02:33.and her daughter. Deborah Levy has been nominated before. Eileen is the
:02:34. > :02:40.first novel from Ottessa Moshfegh. Moshfegh. It is about an unhappy
:02:41. > :02:47.young woman in NHS England. David Szalay is a series of separate
:02:48. > :02:50.linked stories about nine men of different nationalities and
:02:51. > :02:56.Madeleine Thien's epic follows fortunes of three musicians through
:02:57. > :03:01.political upheaval in China. So it is an intriguing mix of
:03:02. > :03:05.historical drama, thriller, crime, there is even some comedy in there
:03:06. > :03:10.as well. The writers too, from Britain, two from America and two
:03:11. > :03:17.who were born from Canada. So, Sarah, how strong a the short list
:03:18. > :03:21.is it? I am a bit biassed in the sense I am, I am somebody who thinks
:03:22. > :03:26.it has been very good for the prize it has expanded the boundaries so as
:03:27. > :03:29.a North American I like hearing North American voices and
:03:30. > :03:34.perspective, I think this is a very strong the short list, I really do.
:03:35. > :03:38.There are remarkable book, one of the things think that is most
:03:39. > :03:43.exciting. With the exception of Eleanor leavy. Most writers will be
:03:44. > :03:47.totally unknown, that is what these kinds of prizes, especially this
:03:48. > :03:50.prize are meant do and can do. It is exciting it has taken the
:03:51. > :03:54.opportunity to do that. When you have be been covering this prize for
:03:55. > :03:58.as long as I have, often there is a front runner, a book that stands
:03:59. > :04:04.head and shoulders above the rest, I don't think that is the case this
:04:05. > :04:07.year. People tend to drav Tait to Deborah Levy because she has been
:04:08. > :04:10.short listed before. Because she is one of the only really well-known
:04:11. > :04:16.writers on the the short list. I think that is true. There is nothing
:04:17. > :04:20.we can pick out as, mind you, when you do pick out something obvious it
:04:21. > :04:25.never wins. Let us look in more detail now. We will start with His
:04:26. > :04:28.Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet, in some ways this book has
:04:29. > :04:32.already won, it's a best seller, he is selling twice as many copies as
:04:33. > :04:39.the other books on the the short list, it is a novel with a crime at
:04:40. > :04:43.its heart and crime novels don't tend to feature on literary prize
:04:44. > :04:47.the short list, why do you think it has made it? It deserves to have
:04:48. > :04:54.made it. The way Graeme Macrae Burnet talks about it, he says it is
:04:55. > :05:01.not a crime novel its it has crime at its centre, we are too limited in
:05:02. > :05:05.our ideas that there is an idea of genre fiction and literary fiction,
:05:06. > :05:09.there are good books and not good book, this is a good book about a
:05:10. > :05:16.crime. One of the reason I think it has made the list it, it has told
:05:17. > :05:20.through multiple perspective, he is raising question about how do we
:05:21. > :05:24.know what the truth? How do we know whether we trust somebody's
:05:25. > :05:32.perspective or not? It is beyond one far rash for, he has six or sun
:05:33. > :05:36.unreliables ones, it takes, it is in the company of people trying to say
:05:37. > :05:40.how can we access truth through memory. This is is a book that wants
:05:41. > :05:46.to ask the big questions. That is the point, it is not a whodunnit.
:05:47. > :05:51.It's a why don it. We think it is possible there may be a twist and we
:05:52. > :05:57.find out he didn't do it at all. But he admits on the fist day he, this
:05:58. > :06:02.guy in the 1860ser very young man with a troubled family background in
:06:03. > :06:06.a remote part of Austria, he slaughter, the enemy of his family.
:06:07. > :06:09.And the very interesting thing that happens in the book is this portrait
:06:10. > :06:15.of a tiny community and the strictures placed on it. It is sort
:06:16. > :06:21.of little bit about the coming of modernity, about old ways being
:06:22. > :06:24.parcelled up in legalese tick terms. It is about the debate and point of
:06:25. > :06:30.view that comes about because of that. When this happens and you have
:06:31. > :06:33.the kind official narratives and then the unofficial narratives, of
:06:34. > :06:38.the people in the community who live with it. There is that part of the
:06:39. > :06:41.conflict of the book, the conflict between the official and an English
:06:42. > :06:45.point of view and the Scottish people there living with it. We have
:06:46. > :06:53.to move on. Sorry. You have a lot to say about this novel. Let us move on
:06:54. > :06:57.to the first American of two. Paul Beatty novel, The sell-out. He said
:06:58. > :07:02.to me it's a difficult book to digest. It is looking at racial
:07:03. > :07:08.politics in contemporary America but it is funny. Did it make you laugh?
:07:09. > :07:12.Yes, it is a hoot. You are immediately brought in, because
:07:13. > :07:16.partly because it's a sort of credibly die degree sieve novel. It
:07:17. > :07:20.references Dickens early on because it is set in a vanished community
:07:21. > :07:28.called Dickens on the outskirts of Los Angeles, but it has a lot of
:07:29. > :07:33.Tristram Shandy. The narrator is telling the story of his life, birth
:07:34. > :07:40.and what happens to him later but in mazy ways and what it has is an
:07:41. > :07:46.outrageous proposition and that is that a black man will in fact
:07:47. > :07:50.reinstitution segregation in a suburb, once you start with that...
:07:51. > :07:53.The twist on that is that is outrageous enough but then the
:07:54. > :07:58.further twist is that it is better for black people when he did that,
:07:59. > :08:05.it exposes racism, so he keeps twisting the knife. We have to move
:08:06. > :08:10.on. David Szalay All That Man Is. David Szalay born in Canada, raised
:08:11. > :08:17.this Britain, lives in Hungary. This is a series of nine separate but
:08:18. > :08:22.interlinked short story, examining modern masculinity, does it add up
:08:23. > :08:26.to a novel? That is a big question, some have suggested that is an
:08:27. > :08:32.academic question, but, you know, as a former judge, we are both former
:08:33. > :08:35.judges the rules are clear, it is about novels, and interlinked short
:08:36. > :08:40.stories are a different thing, so the question to me is how do you
:08:41. > :08:45.decide, what is the boundary between a collection of short stories and a
:08:46. > :08:49.novel? For me it is when they Cree Yate enough of a collective identity
:08:50. > :08:54.that something bigger happens across the course of the book and the in
:08:55. > :08:57.the individual stories. It is not just an academic question, it gets
:08:58. > :09:02.to the heart of what is a novel supposed to do and be. He is taking
:09:03. > :09:08.that challenge on, it is big. The only book before this, that could
:09:09. > :09:12.have claim to have done that is earnest Hemmingway's book In Our
:09:13. > :09:22.Time he is taking on a big challenger indeed. It is a big
:09:23. > :09:28.claim. You are comparing David Szalay to Hemmingway. I was one of
:09:29. > :09:32.those people who suggested it was academic to worry about whether it
:09:33. > :09:35.was a novel rather than a collection. Those boundaries are
:09:36. > :09:39.ever more porous and should be encouraged by a prize like this, to
:09:40. > :09:44.be so, because if we are going to have a prize that is rewarding
:09:45. > :09:48.ambition, dissolving boundaries and is trying to get people to discover,
:09:49. > :09:53.I think those, there is unities of what a novel is don't or shouldn't
:09:54. > :09:56.apply any longer. The word novel means new, so it is meant to keep
:09:57. > :10:02.pushing the boundaries. That is true. Let us move on the second
:10:03. > :10:07.American, Ottessa Moshfegh, she is the youngest writer, she is only 35,
:10:08. > :10:12.she has been short listed for her first novel Eileen, which is a
:10:13. > :10:16.psychological thriller about a young woman who wants to escape from NHS
:10:17. > :10:19.England. I should say the formal proceedings are about to start
:10:20. > :10:25.behind us but we will carry on chatting for a bit if that is all
:10:26. > :10:31.right. It makes us seem very rude. We are not being rude. How much of
:10:32. > :10:37.on a achievement was this? I find it hard to read without knowing some of
:10:38. > :10:41.the paraphernalia round it, which is in interview Ottessa Moshfegh has
:10:42. > :10:45.said she got a book to teen her how to read a novel in 90 days and she
:10:46. > :10:50.did so, because she wanted to bring her work to a wider audience, and
:10:51. > :10:54.also to use the tropes of crime fiction and thriller fiction. People
:10:55. > :11:00.have compared this bit to Patricia Highsmith. I spot a bit of Shirley
:11:01. > :11:05.Jackson in there, and also a bit of Plath. She is a highly accomplish
:11:06. > :11:09.short story writer to go back to that question of form. I am side
:11:10. > :11:14.stepping the question of whether I think this is successful. It is for
:11:15. > :11:18.me possibly compromised a little. I couldn't get onboard with it. What
:11:19. > :11:26.did you make of the character? She is rather sour and difficult. Does
:11:27. > :11:31.she add up to a full creation. She is an unpleasant character who is up
:11:32. > :11:36.front about her unpleasantness. The novel has to give you something
:11:37. > :11:40.else. I think when you don't have a great, you know, linguistic tour de
:11:41. > :11:45.force, a great plot that is kind of, you know, keeps you so gripped in
:11:46. > :11:49.turning the page, it is a strong plot and it has strong characters,
:11:50. > :11:53.but it's a promising first novel but I am excited to see what she does
:11:54. > :12:02.next and I would be less likely to put my money on this book. There is
:12:03. > :12:06.a great control about it. She said she doesn't think it is her best
:12:07. > :12:12.book. She would like to win for the next one, not this one. We will see.
:12:13. > :12:16.Let us move on now to Deborah Levy's book hot milling. She is the second
:12:17. > :12:22.Briton on the the short list this year, she is the most established.
:12:23. > :12:27.She has been short listed before for Swimming Home. This is set in
:12:28. > :12:33.southern Spain and it explores this full relationship between a mother
:12:34. > :12:37.and daughter. Did you enjoy it. I really wanted to enjoy this book,
:12:38. > :12:43.there is a lot in it to admire, for me it didn't quite come to life in
:12:44. > :12:49.the way I wanted to. I keep seeing ideas on the page, that said to back
:12:50. > :12:53.to the point about whether she creates a mood and atmosphere, there
:12:54. > :12:57.is lower sense of emotional constriction and a kind of asphyxia
:12:58. > :13:02.between this mother and daughter that is very effective. Ultimately
:13:03. > :13:08.for me I am not sure it is her best work but there is a lot in it to
:13:09. > :13:13.admire. That is interesting, she was a theatre director and she creates
:13:14. > :13:16.vivid scenes on the page. I love this book. I think what really, I
:13:17. > :13:20.was gripped the minute I started reading it. I think what did it for
:13:21. > :13:26.me was this relationship between mother and dauling daughter so
:13:27. > :13:30.painful, so compromised as I think the her win say, she is trying to
:13:31. > :13:37.solve the mystery of her mother. -- heroine. And to set that against
:13:38. > :13:42.this kind of strangely mythological landscape was fantastic. From the
:13:43. > :13:48.shortest book on the list to the longest. Do Not Say We Have Nothing
:13:49. > :13:52.by Madeleine Thien, a vast sprawling book, examining decades of Chinese
:13:53. > :13:59.history, 500 or so pages when you get to the end, has it been worth
:14:00. > :14:04.it? The end is extraordinary and very very brilliant, I at first had
:14:05. > :14:08.reservation not because of the subject matter or characterisation
:14:09. > :14:13.but that structure of constantly going back, of setting a shadow
:14:14. > :14:17.story alongside a main narrative. There are moments when I think that
:14:18. > :14:22.creeks slightly, but overall I think the kind of emotion of it and the
:14:23. > :14:27.fact that she talks about music as another language, that you can use
:14:28. > :14:32.when you can't use an official language, I found was immensely
:14:33. > :14:36.ambitious. She does weave music through the book like a soundtrack,
:14:37. > :14:40.did it work for you? Absolutely, this was the revelation of the the
:14:41. > :14:44.short list. I didn't know her work. I agree there are bits where I think
:14:45. > :14:48.there are things where if I was an editor I would do this or that
:14:49. > :14:52.differently. Overall I thought it was a remarkable book. Not just
:14:53. > :14:55.about the language of music but about translating Chinese and
:14:56. > :15:03.American, or English but North American but the movement and the
:15:04. > :15:06.math, the main mar rash for is a mathematician, it's a book about
:15:07. > :15:11.language, translation about how you understand yourself and it manages
:15:12. > :15:15.to cut back and forth between Tiananmen Square and the Mao
:15:16. > :15:21.revolution in a way I found really effect -- affecting. Do I take are
:15:22. > :15:27.you think that will win. I would be the one I would vote for. That is
:15:28. > :15:33.what my heart says but I would say David Szalay. I am split between
:15:34. > :15:41.Madeleine Thien and Deborah Levy. You are both sitting on the fence.
:15:42. > :15:49.Let us see. Let us join the chair of the judges Dr Amanda Foreman. A
:15:50. > :15:54.shared commitment to excellence. When the booker was founded in 1968
:15:55. > :16:01.he said he wanted to create a prize that would stimulate interest in
:16:02. > :16:04.serious fiction. Behind that seemingly simple and innocuous
:16:05. > :16:11.statement was something profound, and you might even call it
:16:12. > :16:22.subversive. Because fiction is freedom. To quote, the imagination
:16:23. > :16:33.is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma. What we have in our sixth
:16:34. > :16:37.short listed books is proof that an unfettered imagination, one that is
:16:38. > :16:44.free to explore the scout out-of-bounds of the human
:16:45. > :16:54.condition, is the sine qua non of all writing. The truth is rarely
:16:55. > :17:01.pretty, and it is never comfortable. In Paul Beatty's The sell-out we
:17:02. > :17:04.have an anti-hero whose absurd attempts to resurrect segregation
:17:05. > :17:11.are painfully funny with the emphasis on painful and funny. In
:17:12. > :17:15.Deborah Levy's Hot Milk with have an expose of monstrous mothers and
:17:16. > :17:21.feckless daughters in prose that revels in the complexity and danger
:17:22. > :17:26.of the feminine. Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project goes
:17:27. > :17:33.into the mind of a young murderer, in order to explore where the true
:17:34. > :17:39.destroyers of humanity reside. Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen invite the
:17:40. > :17:44.reader to experience a young woman's rebirth from victim to avenger,
:17:45. > :17:51.through the glorious technicolour reality of blood, vomit, and
:17:52. > :17:57.alcohol. David Szalay's All That Man Is dares his reader to reexamine the
:17:58. > :18:04.masculine in a world that has become unmoored. From everything and every
:18:05. > :18:09.person is an outliar, an outcast, or an outsider.
:18:10. > :18:19.And in Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing, we have a fictional
:18:20. > :18:22.tale about what is very real indeed. The deep poison of totalitarianism
:18:23. > :18:34.and its existential throat the human spirit.
:18:35. > :18:41.My friends, by being here tonight, for the Man Booker prize, we are
:18:42. > :18:47.part of a global vanguard that stands against all threats, both
:18:48. > :18:53.political and practical, to the freedom of writers to write. The
:18:54. > :18:59.freedom of novels to be literary, and the freedom of people everywhere
:19:00. > :19:13.APPLAUSE APPLAUSE
:19:14. > :19:20.Please join me now, in celebration. The winner of the 2016 Man Booker
:19:21. > :19:22.Prize For Fiction is... The sell-out by Paul Beatty.
:19:23. > :19:56.APPLAUSE APPLAUSE
:19:57. > :20:04.So Paul Beatty makes Man Booker Prize history by becoming the first
:20:05. > :20:08.American to win the prize, in its 48 year history, there being
:20:09. > :20:12.congratulated by Deborah Levy one of his fellow nominees, he wins it for
:20:13. > :20:37.a truly American novel. The sell-out.
:20:38. > :20:44.This is a book that explores race relations in modern America and
:20:45. > :20:50.tells the story of a young black man in Los Angeles. He tries to
:20:51. > :21:05.reintroduce racial segregation. Oh man. As usual I am woefully
:21:06. > :21:15.unprepared. But, yeah, think, I mean I am unprepared but I pretend a lot,
:21:16. > :21:20.and... Deborah was saying something in Cheltenham about being lost. It
:21:21. > :21:30.is something that I love being lost, you know, it is the only time I get
:21:31. > :21:39.anywhere. And yeah. I am sorry. I wasn't expecting this I have to say.
:21:40. > :21:47.Give me a second. Sorry. I can't tell you guys, like, how a
:21:48. > :21:55.journey this has been for me, Sarah my agent has known me for at least
:21:56. > :22:00.20 year, and I don't want to like get all dramatic, writing saved my
:22:01. > :22:09.life, significant like that, but writing has given me a life, and I
:22:10. > :22:21.had all these things... Can I talk about the book for one second, I
:22:22. > :22:28.guess? I did a reading in Detroit at a college, small college and they
:22:29. > :22:33.did a little get together in my honour, and, with some city kids,
:22:34. > :22:39.and I had to give a formal reading like this I wasn't dressed as
:22:40. > :22:45.formally, but I started reading, and I couldn't get to the second
:22:46. > :22:50.paragraph of the book, and I just started crying, cry, crying, like I
:22:51. > :23:01.couldn't stop crying, that is my girlfriend out there. I will get to
:23:02. > :23:07.you in a second. And it was... And so I mean this went on for five
:23:08. > :23:14.minutes, and I was like, I got to tell them why I'm crying but I
:23:15. > :23:20.didn't know. I finally got some semblance of composure, and I said
:23:21. > :23:25.you know, as hard as I work on anything I have ever written, when I
:23:26. > :23:30.heard that book out loud, it was the first time I heard it out loud. I
:23:31. > :23:36.thought it matches the language in my head exactly and the music in my
:23:37. > :23:45.head. I didn't know it until I said it out loud. I wouldn't be here with
:23:46. > :23:57.this book without Althea. She means everything to me.
:23:58. > :24:02.APPLAUSE And I am not lazy, I just don't
:24:03. > :24:08.commit to much, if I commit to something I do it, and so I had been
:24:09. > :24:11.avoiding writing this book, and this organisation in the States called
:24:12. > :24:15.Creative Capital they were asking me to take their money, and I didn't
:24:16. > :24:18.want to do it because the application was too long, and I just
:24:19. > :24:28.didn't want to write. I hate writing. I didn't want to write. But
:24:29. > :24:32.Althea made me do it. She said they are giving you money you have to
:24:33. > :24:38.take it. I wrote nine little sentences, it is not what the book
:24:39. > :24:45.is but it made me force myself to put this book together. So there is
:24:46. > :24:53.a bunch of people I have to thank. I have to thank Sarah, Althea I have
:24:54. > :24:58.already thanked. My mum, my editor at FSG who is, he just tells me to
:24:59. > :25:03.the right thing to say, I have been working with him for a long time, 15
:25:04. > :25:08.years or so, somewhere close to that, I just give him a jumble of I
:25:09. > :25:12.don't know what it is, he says Paul, write the story, then I know what I
:25:13. > :25:16.have to do. I am deeply thankful to him for that.
:25:17. > :25:23.This is so weird, this is not me up here, I don't know even know who
:25:24. > :25:28.this is. It is so crazy. And I guess I have to talk about
:25:29. > :25:34.that little bit. I forgot to thank Juliette. I don't know what is true
:25:35. > :25:38.and what is not true. But this is too straight for you Juliette, that
:25:39. > :25:44.says something for you, and beyond the tape I think it says about the
:25:45. > :25:48.risk you are willing to take, so, I mean this is a hard book. It was
:25:49. > :25:53.hard for me to write. I know it is hard the read. Everyone is coming at
:25:54. > :25:58.it from different angles. Sarah is having a hard time pushing the book,
:25:59. > :26:02.I know, and Juliette was the only person I think, I don't know, I
:26:03. > :26:07.don't know but I think, thank you Juliette, what can I say? You took
:26:08. > :26:14.the chance and look what happened. Yeah. We are going to have to leave
:26:15. > :26:22.Paul Beatty there, clearly very emotional, and unexpected win, I
:26:23. > :26:25.think for him. But he becomes the first American winner of the Man
:26:26. > :26:29.Booker Prize in its 48 year history, that is for his novel The sell-out.
:26:30. > :26:35.It took him seven years to write it, it is his fourth novel, and it
:26:36. > :26:39.examined race relations in modern America today. From all of us here
:26:40. > :27:03.at The Guild Hall, thank you for watching. Goodbye.
:27:04. > :27:09.Hello, judging by your pictures some of you were enjoying the blue sky
:27:10. > :27:13.and sunshine, showing off the autumn colours very well in eastern
:27:14. > :27:16.England, and plenty of blue sky too in eastern Scotland. And our weather
:27:17. > :27:17.is turning milder. We are