Any conversation about what reflects the best of world literature necessarily becomes a referendum on what literature can and should do. As chair of judges for this year’s Booker prize, I think it’s safe to say the conversations between my fellow judges and I were never dull. Adjoa Andoh, Mary-Jean Chan, James Shapiro and Robert Webb and I spoke for hours to decide on our shortlist, always going overtime. What, we asked ourselves, made a book great? Was it extraordinary prose? An uncanny vision? Was it even something definable or some more ineffable quality?
The debates were often enthralling: sometimes intimate, sometimes contentious, never short of brilliant. We brought to the task a range of tastes and disciplines, which no doubt shaped our perspectives – indeed, on our own, we might have produced five different lists – but this speaks to the health and vibrancy of the literary climate. We were reminded of the many varieties of human experience, of life’s boundlessness, and above all of the miraculous capacity we have within us for change.
