13 PRIZE
How on earth do you follow up a Booker win? As these authors have shown, you could change direction, do pretty much the same thing or just not bother at all. Yann Martel Life of Pi In 2002. the publishing world went ape when Martel's fable abOut a lad lost at sea With a bunch of animals for company brought Canongate into the public eye. This success was tainted by accusations of plagiarism from Brazilian author Moacyr Sclair and, perhaps as a consequence. we are still awaiting the follow—up. Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things In 1997. the lndiaii writer became only the second author to Win with a debut. this tale of twms who become Victims of Circumstance. Intriguingly. she has yet to pen a fictional follow-up. concentrating instead on political writing and campaigning against nuclear proliferation and dam protects. James Kelman How Late it Was. How Late f The Glasgow scribe became the first (and so far only) Scot to scoop the big yin in 1994, to the utter disgust of Judge Jules Neuberger who stormed off. dubbing the result ‘a disgrace'. Many others suggested that Kelman was the one who had been wronged. having been passed over five years earlier for A Di'saffecfion. Kelman girded his literary loins and got even more coarsely authentic with short story collection The Good Times in 98. Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
C {6 To some. Doyle is the ‘ funniest writer of books A;
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ever. In the world. Bar none. This is to ignore the deeply serious nature of his work and the Dubliner won in 1993 for this tale of adolescence. abuse and abandonment. He went even further for his next piece in 1997: The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is a harrowing account of domestic violence from the Victims pornt of view. Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children In beating off grand dames of literature Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark in 1981. Bonds future mate earned a name for himself as a new pioneer of magic realism. The book went on to be voted the Booker of Bookers in 1993 while the author was sheltering from the Ayatollah's wrath. His last novel as a free man was Shame from 83. which took on the theme of Pakistan.
' THE LIST 15