Judge not, that ye be not judged, Jesus advised, a ruling that had always appealed to me despite having had a career as a critic. In my years as literary editor of the late London Evening Standard , instead of zealously supporting all literary prizes as I should have done, I annually scoffed at their mishaps, mirthfully describing the Booker Prize as the equivalent of a literary harvest festival, brightly observing that the judges were being called upon to choose between an apple and an orange and so forth. Yet, of course, when, in 2005, I was invited to become a judge myself, I was flattered and accepted.
At this time, the Man Booker Prize was in its heyday, its standing not yet squandered by the decision to include American writers or befuddled by identity politics. That year the harvest was spectacular. An astonishing number of good novels were published.
Among those on the longlist that did not make it to the shortlist were books by Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Dan Jacobson, Rachel Cusk, Ian McEwan ( Saturday ) and JM Coetzee ( Slow Man ) that might have progressed in any other gathering. The shortlist we eventually decided upon contained not a single dud: The Sea by John Banville, Arthur & George by Julian Barnes, A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry, The Accidental by Ali Smith, On Beauty by Zadie Smith – and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Still, I knew quite well what I wanted to win.
I’d reviewed several of Ishiguro’s novels and had interviewed him early on.
