Another Kind of Competition: Behind the Scenes at a Literary Prize

Fall is literary prize time, for better of worse! Here's a novel that may confirm everything you suspected about them.

A  writer friend suggested Lost for Words by Edward St.Aubyn just after the short list for the Canadian biggie, the Scotia Giller, was announced.  She said it was a great spoof of how prizes are given out, and since she is usually a good judge I checked it out of the library immediately.

Takes place in  the UK and the prize is something called the Elysian Award,  The contenders in  2013 are a varied lot: among them are  a slice-of-life saga wot u looking at? that purports to be by a member of Britain's under class but which is really by a medieval scholar; the story of young Will Shakespeare that appears to be composed of lines lifted from the Bard, and an Indian cookbook, entered by mistake.

The judges are equally diverse, but all with their own axe to grind. There's a fair amount of sex along the way--chiefly between a young woman whose novel was omitted by accident from the competition and her several lovers--and some nasty depictions of spoiled remnants of the British Raj, British diplomats, and French intellectuals.

In all, quite funny if you're cynical about the literary world.  Or, conversely, annoyingly precious if you think there are far too many people with big heads writing, reviewing and judging books.