Politics of the Man Booker Prize(s): The Case of The White Tiger and Sea of Poppies

Satyanarayan Tiwari¹ & Ajay K Chaubey²

¹Doctoral candidate at the Department of English, Dr. H S Gour Central University, Sagar.

²Assistant Professor of English at the Department of Sciences & Humanities, National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand. E-mail: kcajay79@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 3, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n3.10

Received May 06, 2018; Revised September 29, 2018: Accepted October 27, 2018; Published October 29, 2018.

Abstract:

The present paper is a modest attempt to map the nuances of the politics of literary prizes and their reception in pan-global [literary] market. The discrimination in awarding the prizes is explicitly perceptible when any cultural text produced by the writers of the ‘third world’ is shortlisted for the prize in general, and the Man Booker in particular. It has been studied and observed that the texts which satiate the exotic lens of ‘Orientalism’, or carry colonial legacies, are brought to the fore to mollify the western academia. As a result, affirmative responses for a distorted picture of India portrayed by Indian/diasporic writers, has not only attracted young writers but also paved a shortcut way for them who intend to be famous overnight in the international literary firmament. Therefore, the politics of the Man Booker prize in this regard are discernible, as it not only masquerades, but also marques a writer, a celebrity.

Keywords:  Third World, Orientalism, Diaspora, the Man Booker Prize, Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies