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Just two months after scooping the Best of the Bookers prize Salman Rushdie was judged to have written a new novel that was "not enough of a page-turner" to even make it to the award's shortlist.
Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, had been the bookmakers' early favourite to win this year's Man Booker prize, closely followed by the post-September 11 drama Neverland, by Joseph O'Neill.
The judging panel, which included former British Cabinet minister Michael Portillo, novelist Louise Doughty, Ottaker's bookshop founder James Heneage, Granta editor Alex Clark, and television presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli, commended the six selected writers, which included two debut novelists, for their readability as well as literary excellence. When asked why Rushdie had failed to make the list, the answer was short and simple. The book was not enough of a page-turner, Doughty said: "If you take the whole of its literary qualities it is not as good as the six we have chosen."
And Rushdie's oeuvre was pretty "patchy", said Kohli.
"There are some good books and some not so good books." Referring to Rushdie's most acclaimed book, Midnight's Children, which has received three Booker awards, Kohli said: "I have never known a book that has split opinion as much as this one, with some people secretly confessing to not having finished reading it, and some secretly hating it."
Portillo, who is chair of the jury panel, said Rushdie's "Booker hat-trick" had not coloured the panel's judgment when debating the latest novel's prospects.
"I don't want you to think there was particularly passionate debate about this book," he said.
Rushdie won the Booker prize for Midnight's Children in 1981.
He then scooped the Booker of Bookers for the prize's 25th anniversary for the novel.
In July, he was awarded the Best of the Bookers from a list of 41 previous winners.
This year's Man Booker Prize winner will be announced on October 14.
- INDEPENDENT
