When the 2022 Booker shortlist was announced in September, 87-year-old Alan Garner was highlighted as the oldest-ever shortlisted author. On the day the prize was announced he turned 88. That said, his nominated novel, Treacle Walker, begins with a quote from Italian quantum physicist, Carlo Rovelli: “Time is ignorance.”
Age is, of course, an aspect of time. But Garner, older as he might be getting, has a photo of himself aged six (grinning very fully and twinkly-eyed at something distant), which he has stated most captures who he is “then and now”.
