Paula Morris: NZ condemned to margins unless we shift cultural gaze

Author Eleanor Catton. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Many writers resist national labels. Like Salman Rushdie, we'd rather belong to "the boundless kingdom of the imagination ... the unfettered republic of the tongue".

Unfortunately, the world of book prizes is more specific - delineated by markets, publishing eligibility and sometimes citizenship.

For those of us from the Southern Hemisphere - or from continents like, say, Africa - the status accorded to international literary prizes is a constant reminder of our marginality.

Only five of the 107 Nobel literature laureates, for example, have been writers from the Southern Hemisphere. In the English-speaking literary world, we're stuck in outdated hierarchies, looking north to the once-imperial power for cultural leadership and validation. For English-language writers from outside the UK or US, our national or regional prizes don't translate beyond local markets. The Kiriyama Prize, for books about "the Pacific Rim and South Asia" closed in 2008. The Commonwealth Prize ended its main book award in 2011.

The Man Booker Prize - the self-styled most important literary award in the English-speaking world - presents an illusion of internationalism. After all, last year Australian writer Richard Flanagan won; the 2013 winner was New Zealander Eleanor Catton. It's easy to think that we infidels have stormed the palace and can wave more compatriots through the gates. We don't realise how many gates there are.

After US authors were admitted last year, Ion Trewin, literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, declared that the "winner of the 2014 [Man Booker] prize will be able to say: 'I am the best in the English-speaking world"' - suggesting the Man Booker serves as global scout.

In fact, like the Baileys Women's Prize and the Folio Prize, it's a British prize, with British or British-based judges, selecting from works of fiction submitted by British publishers from the lists of books published that year in Britain.

No surprise then, as Scottish writer Alan Bissett noted in 2012, that "of the 46 Booker winners [to date], 24 have been English - over half - although England represents a mere 2.5 per cent of the Commonwealth", because most novels published in Britain are by English authors. No surprise that only three New Zealand novels have made the shortlist in the entire 46-year history of the prize, because most Commonwealth novels are not published in the UK.

English author Philip Hensher admits that prize committees "are at the mercy of what London publishers think will sell in London".

Orhan Pamuk writes: "We all give too much importance to the idea of a world with a centre." Must those of us south of the equator accept what he calls "being consigned to the margins", looking north for our cultural cues, allowing London and New York to shape the canon? It's time to level our gaze, and speak directly to each other.

Paula Morris is a novelist who teaches at the University of Auckland.