By Sophy Kohler for the Sunday Times
Less than a year after being pushed to resign from her professorship at the University of Essex, Dame Marina Warner has been awarded one of the world’s most prestigious scholarly prizes, the Holberg Prize. Warner recently stirred up debate for her condemnation of the for-profit model of universities, where academics must earn their keep, often by accepting untenable workloads, and where “young scholars waste their best energies writing grant proposals”. Her criticisms are built not only on her extensive teaching experience and intellectual acuity – she was made a dame for her services to higher education – but they are triggered by a comparison with the world of “communist corporatism” depicted in the many Chinese novels she has been reading in her role as chair of judges for this year’s Man Booker International Prize.
The International Booker, now in its sixth year, is held bi-annually and recognises the body of work of an author rather than a single book. The last prize went to American writer Lydia Davis in 2013, which, though not necessarily undeserved, is representative of the strange trajectory the prize has taken. Its aim is to acknowledge international fiction, but four out of five times it has been awarded to authors writing in English. Warner hopes that this year will mark a move away from what she terms a kind of “American domestic realism”, a definite possibility given the composition of the judging panel. Warner is joined by Wen-chin Ouyang, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at SOAS; Pakistan-born author Nadeem Aslam; Edwin Frank, editorial director of the New York Review Books Classics series; and South African-born Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature at Oxford University.
“I think it’s a fantastic panel,” Warner tells me over Skype from her home in north London, where spring is “struggling through”. “There’s a terrific range of reading, range of knowledge and love of different literatures represented. And so far it’s been terrific fun and very harmonious.” Together the judges have a good sweep of the continents, with their individual cultural and linguistic backgrounds bringing a range of texts in translation in focus, including some in Italian, French, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, English, Dutch and Afrikaans. This is significant, as translation is not only an important aspect of the prize, but also, says Warner, of contemporary literature. “The issue of migration and diaspora and adoptive languages is a terrific feature of contemporary literature. It’s a theme in contemporary literature, but it’s also a process of the writers themselves in contemporary literature.”
Translation is a theme that shows up in her own writing, too. Both 2011’s Stranger Magic and the more recent Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale consider the universal quality of the fairy tale, with Stranger Magic dedicated specifically to the Arabian Nights. The book was commissioned by Oxford University Press for their Very Short Introduction series. “The idea of the series is that someone whose work has generally been in that field writes a short book about it,” Warner tells me. “So a lot of people who are, as it were, at the end of their careers write these books where they sort of distill the knowledge of a lifetime into it.”
It took her eight years to write and, despite being physically slim, is a very substantial work. “It’s actually fantastically hard to write a short book about something you know a lot about,” she says.
Warner describes fairy tale as “a language by which we communicate across borders”. “We understand one another’s fairy tales, regardless of how particular they are rooted in that culture,” she says. For example, the Arabian Nights is “a work that kind of transcends its language, because it’s become naturalised in so many other languages.”
The Man Booker International shortlist announcement always takes place outside of the UK, and this year Cape Town was the host. The event will be flanked by a public seminar on the Arabian Nights and a panel discussion with the prize judges. “I think we’re arriving at an interesting list,” Warner says, “but I hope a surprising list, and a list that’s also emblematic, to some extent, of the strengths of current fiction.” Conscious of the immense difficulty of arriving at an ultimate winner – to be announced on 19 May – she jokes, “I was sort of thinking that maybe I’d make the judges all run a race and the one who wins has to choose.” – @sophycola
The Man Booker International Prize 2015 list of finalists were announced at the University of Cape Town today. For more information on the associated events, visit www.uct.ac.za
Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale
Marina Warner (Oxford University Press)
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- Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale by Marina Warner
EAN: 9780198718659
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