For the second year, The Guardian will be running its “Not the Booker Prize” competition, where recent literary greats can compete (as nominated by Internet commentators) for this coveted prize:
The prize was designed to thwart three common flaws in the real Booker Prize: your favourite book didn’t win (and if you are me you had two favourites on the shortlist and they still didn’t win because Sarah Waters can’t catch a mainstream literary break and obviously the judges just didn’t actually read Summertime, the book that does win is usually about post-colonial guilt, Irish poverty or English middle-class Islingtonians having Terribly Important Thoughts about their boring love lives, and the panel is made up of people no one’s ever heard of. The Not the Booker prize panel is also made up of people no one’s ever heard of, but at least they have the Internet commenting trail to prove they have opinions. And the ironclad Terms and Conditions which basically, just go read it:
“The author of the winning book will receive a Guardian mug. They may not want it, but there’s nothing we can do about that. No prizes will be awarded to readers for submitting a nomination, but you will have our undying gratitude for taking part, cracking jokes about the entries, composing odes in praise of Sam Jordison or sniping from the sidelines, as you see fit.”
The best part, however, is that the only previous winner of the Not the Booker prize, Rana Dasgupta, called his victory “very depressing.”