Americans Wouldn't Sweep the Booker Prize

In what is assumed to be a pre-emptive strike against next year's inaugural Folio prize, which will be open to writers from all over the world, the Man Booker committee is this week expected to announce that it is widening the entry qualifications to include American writers. The news has triggered a backlash from many British, Irish and Commonwealth authors who feel, with some justification, that it's hard enough for first-time and relatively unknown authors to get recognition as it is, without widening the literary gene pool – especially when the Americans show no sign of opening up the National Book awards or the Pulitzer prize to writers from outside the US. The only writer with nothing to worry about, as Hari Kunzru pointed out on Twitter, is Peter Carey, who was born in the Commonwealth and is a US citizen and can be entered for just about everything.