Man Booker Prize 2016

We will find out who has won one of the world's most important and most

famous literary prizes, the Man Booker. Welcome to all of you, it

has been quite a journey to get to this point, the judges considered

155 book, they were whittled down to a long list of 13, a the short list

of six and tonight, there will be one book left, just one winner. This

is a real highlight of the literary calendar, 500 guests have been

enjoying a champagne reception and three course dinner and among them

the six writers short listed for the prize this year. What a

nervewracking evening it must be for them, waiting nervously to find out

if they have won and who knows, even beginning to think about the ?50,000

cheque that goes with winning. And, we have a royal guest with us

tonight as well. Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall will present

the toy to the winner. To help guide its through the proceedings I am

delighted to say we are joined by two former judges.

Joining me to discuss this year's nominees are two former judges,

Sarah Churchwell, who is a professor of public humanities

and American iterature at the University of London,

Much to discuss, I am looking forward to it. But before that, let

us remind you who is on this year's the short list.

This year the six nominees are, The sell-out by Paul Beatty, about a

young black man in Los Angeles who decides to reinstate slavery and

racial segregation, his bloody project by Graeme Macrae Burnet, it

tells the story of three bluetle -- brutal murders in the Scottish

Highlands. Hot Milk explores the toxic relation Shep between a mother

and her daughter. Deborah Levy has been nominated before. Eileen is the

first novel from Ottessa Moshfegh. Moshfegh. It is about an unhappy

young woman in NHS England. David Szalay is a series of separate

linked stories about nine men of different nationalities and

Madeleine Thien's epic follows fortunes of three musicians through

political upheaval in China. So it is an intriguing mix of

historical drama, thriller, crime, there is even some comedy in there

as well. The writers too, from Britain, two from America and two

who were born from Canada. So, Sarah, how strong a the short list

is it? I am a bit biassed in the sense I am, I am somebody who thinks

it has been very good for the prize it has expanded the boundaries so as

a North American I like hearing North American voices and

perspective, I think this is a very strong the short list, I really do.

There are remarkable book, one of the things think that is most

exciting. With the exception of Eleanor leavy. Most writers will be

totally unknown, that is what these kinds of prizes, especially this

prize are meant do and can do. It is exciting it has taken the

opportunity to do that. When you have be been covering this prize for

as long as I have, often there is a front runner, a book that stands

head and shoulders above the rest, I don't think that is the case this

year. People tend to drav Tait to Deborah Levy because she has been

short listed before. Because she is one of the only really well-known

writers on the the short list. I think that is true. There is nothing

we can pick out as, mind you, when you do pick out something obvious it

never wins. Let us look in more detail now. We will start with His

Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet, in some ways this book has

already won, it's a best seller, he is selling twice as many copies as

the other books on the the short list, it is a novel with a crime at

its heart and crime novels don't tend to feature on literary prize

the short list, why do you think it has made it? It deserves to have

made it. The way Graeme Macrae Burnet talks about it, he says it is

not a crime novel its it has crime at its centre, we are too limited in

our ideas that there is an idea of genre fiction and literary fiction,

there are good books and not good book, this is a good book about a

crime. One of the reason I think it has made the list it, it has told

through multiple perspective, he is raising question about how do we

know what the truth? How do we know whether we trust somebody's

perspective or not? It is beyond one far rash for, he has six or sun

unreliables ones, it takes, it is in the company of people trying to say

how can we access truth through memory. This is is a book that wants

to ask the big questions. That is the point, it is not a whodunnit.

It's a why don it. We think it is possible there may be a twist and we

find out he didn't do it at all. But he admits on the fist day he, this

guy in the 1860ser very young man with a troubled family background in

a remote part of Austria, he slaughter, the enemy of his family.

And the very interesting thing that happens in the book is this portrait

of a tiny community and the strictures placed on it. It is sort

of little bit about the coming of modernity, about old ways being

parcelled up in legalese tick terms. It is about the debate and point of

view that comes about because of that. When this happens and you have

the kind official narratives and then the unofficial narratives, of

the people in the community who live with it. There is that part of the

conflict of the book, the conflict between the official and an English

point of view and the Scottish people there living with it. We have

to move on. Sorry. You have a lot to say about this novel. Let us move on

to the first American of two. Paul Beatty novel, The sell-out. He said

to me it's a difficult book to digest. It is looking at racial

politics in contemporary America but it is funny. Did it make you laugh?

Yes, it is a hoot. You are immediately brought in, because

partly because it's a sort of credibly die degree sieve novel. It

references Dickens early on because it is set in a vanished community

called Dickens on the outskirts of Los Angeles, but it has a lot of

Tristram Shandy. The narrator is telling the story of his life, birth

and what happens to him later but in mazy ways and what it has is an

outrageous proposition and that is that a black man will in fact

reinstitution segregation in a suburb, once you start with that...

The twist on that is that is outrageous enough but then the

further twist is that it is better for black people when he did that,

it exposes racism, so he keeps twisting the knife. We have to move

on. David Szalay All That Man Is. David Szalay born in Canada, raised

this Britain, lives in Hungary. This is a series of nine separate but

interlinked short story, examining modern masculinity, does it add up

to a novel? That is a big question, some have suggested that is an

academic question, but, you know, as a former judge, we are both former

judges the rules are clear, it is about novels, and interlinked short

stories are a different thing, so the question to me is how do you

decide, what is the boundary between a collection of short stories and a

novel? For me it is when they Cree Yate enough of a collective identity

that something bigger happens across the course of the book and the in

the individual stories. It is not just an academic question, it gets

to the heart of what is a novel supposed to do and be. He is taking

that challenge on, it is big. The only book before this, that could

have claim to have done that is earnest Hemmingway's book In Our

Time he is taking on a big challenger indeed. It is a big

claim. You are comparing David Szalay to Hemmingway. I was one of

those people who suggested it was academic to worry about whether it

was a novel rather than a collection. Those boundaries are

ever more porous and should be encouraged by a prize like this, to

be so, because if we are going to have a prize that is rewarding

ambition, dissolving boundaries and is trying to get people to discover,

I think those, there is unities of what a novel is don't or shouldn't

apply any longer. The word novel means new, so it is meant to keep

pushing the boundaries. That is true. Let us move on the second

American, Ottessa Moshfegh, she is the youngest writer, she is only 35,

she has been short listed for her first novel Eileen, which is a

psychological thriller about a young woman who wants to escape from NHS

England. I should say the formal proceedings are about to start

behind us but we will carry on chatting for a bit if that is all

right. It makes us seem very rude. We are not being rude. How much of

on a achievement was this? I find it hard to read without knowing some of

the paraphernalia round it, which is in interview Ottessa Moshfegh has

said she got a book to teen her how to read a novel in 90 days and she

did so, because she wanted to bring her work to a wider audience, and

also to use the tropes of crime fiction and thriller fiction. People

have compared this bit to Patricia Highsmith. I spot a bit of Shirley

Jackson in there, and also a bit of Plath. She is a highly accomplish

short story writer to go back to that question of form. I am side

stepping the question of whether I think this is successful. It is for

me possibly compromised a little. I couldn't get onboard with it. What

did you make of the character? She is rather sour and difficult. Does

she add up to a full creation. She is an unpleasant character who is up

front about her unpleasantness. The novel has to give you something

else. I think when you don't have a great, you know, linguistic tour de

force, a great plot that is kind of, you know, keeps you so gripped in

turning the page, it is a strong plot and it has strong characters,

but it's a promising first novel but I am excited to see what she does

next and I would be less likely to put my money on this book. There is

a great control about it. She said she doesn't think it is her best

book. She would like to win for the next one, not this one. We will see.

Let us move on now to Deborah Levy's book hot milling. She is the second

Briton on the the short list this year, she is the most established.

She has been short listed before for Swimming Home. This is set in

southern Spain and it explores this full relationship between a mother

and daughter. Did you enjoy it. I really wanted to enjoy this book,

there is a lot in it to admire, for me it didn't quite come to life in

the way I wanted to. I keep seeing ideas on the page, that said to back

to the point about whether she creates a mood and atmosphere, there

is lower sense of emotional constriction and a kind of asphyxia

between this mother and daughter that is very effective. Ultimately

for me I am not sure it is her best work but there is a lot in it to

admire. That is interesting, she was a theatre director and she creates

vivid scenes on the page. I love this book. I think what really, I

was gripped the minute I started reading it. I think what did it for

me was this relationship between mother and dauling daughter so

painful, so compromised as I think the her win say, she is trying to

solve the mystery of her mother. -- heroine. And to set that against

this kind of strangely mythological landscape was fantastic. From the

shortest book on the list to the longest. Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien, a vast sprawling book, examining decades of Chinese

history, 500 or so pages when you get to the end, has it been worth

it? The end is extraordinary and very very brilliant, I at first had

reservation not because of the subject matter or characterisation

but that structure of constantly going back, of setting a shadow

story alongside a main narrative. There are moments when I think that

creeks slightly, but overall I think the kind of emotion of it and the

fact that she talks about music as another language, that you can use

when you can't use an official language, I found was immensely

ambitious. She does weave music through the book like a soundtrack,

did it work for you? Absolutely, this was the revelation of the the

short list. I didn't know her work. I agree there are bits where I think

there are things where if I was an editor I would do this or that

differently. Overall I thought it was a remarkable book. Not just

about the language of music but about translating Chinese and

American, or English but North American but the movement and the

math, the main mar rash for is a mathematician, it's a book about

language, translation about how you understand yourself and it manages

to cut back and forth between Tiananmen Square and the Mao

revolution in a way I found really effect -- affecting. Do I take are

you think that will win. I would be the one I would vote for. That is

what my heart says but I would say David Szalay. I am split between

Madeleine Thien and Deborah Levy. You are both sitting on the fence.

Let us see. Let us join the chair of the judges Dr Amanda Foreman. A

shared commitment to excellence. When the booker was founded in 1968

he said he wanted to create a prize that would stimulate interest in

serious fiction. Behind that seemingly simple and innocuous

statement was something profound, and you might even call it

subversive. Because fiction is freedom. To quote, the imagination

is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma. What we have in our sixth

short listed books is proof that an unfettered imagination, one that is

free to explore the scout out-of-bounds of the human

condition, is the sine qua non of all writing. The truth is rarely

pretty, and it is never comfortable. In Paul Beatty's The sell-out we

have an anti-hero whose absurd attempts to resurrect segregation

are painfully funny with the emphasis on painful and funny. In

Deborah Levy's Hot Milk with have an expose of monstrous mothers and

feckless daughters in prose that revels in the complexity and danger

of the feminine. Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project goes

into the mind of a young murderer, in order to explore where the true

destroyers of humanity reside. Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen invite the

reader to experience a young woman's rebirth from victim to avenger,

through the glorious technicolour reality of blood, vomit, and

alcohol. David Szalay's All That Man Is dares his reader to reexamine the

masculine in a world that has become unmoored. From everything and every

person is an outliar, an outcast, or an outsider.

And in Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing, we have a fictional

tale about what is very real indeed. The deep poison of totalitarianism

and its existential throat the human spirit.

My friends, by being here tonight, for the Man Booker prize, we are

part of a global vanguard that stands against all threats, both

political and practical, to the freedom of writers to write. The

freedom of novels to be literary, and the freedom of people everywhere

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE

Please join me now, in celebration. The winner of the 2016 Man Booker

Prize For Fiction is... The sell-out by Paul Beatty.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE

So Paul Beatty makes Man Booker Prize history by becoming the first

American to win the prize, in its 48 year history, there being

congratulated by Deborah Levy one of his fellow nominees, he wins it for

a truly American novel. The sell-out.

This is a book that explores race relations in modern America and

tells the story of a young black man in Los Angeles. He tries to

reintroduce racial segregation. Oh man. As usual I am woefully

unprepared. But, yeah, think, I mean I am unprepared but I pretend a lot,

and... Deborah was saying something in Cheltenham about being lost. It

is something that I love being lost, you know, it is the only time I get

anywhere. And yeah. I am sorry. I wasn't expecting this I have to say.

Give me a second. Sorry. I can't tell you guys, like, how a

journey this has been for me, Sarah my agent has known me for at least

20 year, and I don't want to like get all dramatic, writing saved my

life, significant like that, but writing has given me a life, and I

had all these things... Can I talk about the book for one second, I

guess? I did a reading in Detroit at a college, small college and they

did a little get together in my honour, and, with some city kids,

and I had to give a formal reading like this I wasn't dressed as

formally, but I started reading, and I couldn't get to the second

paragraph of the book, and I just started crying, cry, crying, like I

couldn't stop crying, that is my girlfriend out there. I will get to

you in a second. And it was... And so I mean this went on for five

minutes, and I was like, I got to tell them why I'm crying but I

didn't know. I finally got some semblance of composure, and I said

you know, as hard as I work on anything I have ever written, when I

heard that book out loud, it was the first time I heard it out loud. I

thought it matches the language in my head exactly and the music in my

head. I didn't know it until I said it out loud. I wouldn't be here with

this book without Althea. She means everything to me.

APPLAUSE And I am not lazy, I just don't

commit to much, if I commit to something I do it, and so I had been

avoiding writing this book, and this organisation in the States called

Creative Capital they were asking me to take their money, and I didn't

want to do it because the application was too long, and I just

didn't want to write. I hate writing. I didn't want to write. But

Althea made me do it. She said they are giving you money you have to

take it. I wrote nine little sentences, it is not what the book

is but it made me force myself to put this book together. So there is

a bunch of people I have to thank. I have to thank Sarah, Althea I have

already thanked. My mum, my editor at FSG who is, he just tells me to

the right thing to say, I have been working with him for a long time, 15

years or so, somewhere close to that, I just give him a jumble of I

don't know what it is, he says Paul, write the story, then I know what I

have to do. I am deeply thankful to him for that.

This is so weird, this is not me up here, I don't know even know who

this is. It is so crazy. And I guess I have to talk about

that little bit. I forgot to thank Juliette. I don't know what is true

and what is not true. But this is too straight for you Juliette, that

says something for you, and beyond the tape I think it says about the

risk you are willing to take, so, I mean this is a hard book. It was

hard for me to write. I know it is hard the read. Everyone is coming at

it from different angles. Sarah is having a hard time pushing the book,

I know, and Juliette was the only person I think, I don't know, I

don't know but I think, thank you Juliette, what can I say? You took

the chance and look what happened. Yeah. We are going to have to leave

Paul Beatty there, clearly very emotional, and unexpected win, I

think for him. But he becomes the first American winner of the Man

Booker Prize in its 48 year history, that is for his novel The sell-out.

It took him seven years to write it, it is his fourth novel, and it

examined race relations in modern America today. From all of us here

at The Guild Hall, thank you for watching. Goodbye.

Hello, judging by your pictures some of you were enjoying the blue sky

and sunshine, showing off the autumn colours very well in eastern

England, and plenty of blue sky too in eastern Scotland. And our weather

is turning milder. We are