Miren Gutierrez* interviews LOUISE DOUGHTY, novelist and critic
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ROME, Nov 25 (IPS) – The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 102 times to 106 Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2009. Only 10 of those winners were women. Meanwhile, the Man Booker Prize has been awarded to 15 women in 40 years.2009 will be remembered as the year when two women, Herta Müller and Hilary Mantel, were awarded two of the most prestigious literature prizes. But all things being equal, shouldn’t something like that happen more often?
After all, in most markets more women read novels than men. Industry statistics from the U.S. Bookseller Association and Book Industry Study Group indicate that Women’s Fiction comprises at least 40 percent of adult popular fiction sold in the U.S. and approximately 60 percent of adult popular fiction paperbacks. According to a Gallup Poll, we’re talking of a 24 billion dollar industry. There is a similar situation in other languages too.
Louise Doughty – a novelist, playwright and critic – spoke with IPS about women’s standing in literature and the role of literary awards and gender. Doughty has worked widely as a critic and broadcaster in Britain, and was a judge for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for fiction.
IPS: Three women (Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison and Wislawa Szymborska) we awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature during the ’90s, and another three (Elfriede Jelinek, Doris Lessing and Herta Müller) so far since. Do you think the Nobel is getting closer to equal representation?
LOUISE DOUGHTY: Things are definitively improving. But the improvement is still very slow. I think we’ll all know we have reached equality in literature when nobody thinks it is remarkable when a woman wins a prize. But at the moment, when a woman wins a prize, it is still a story.
IPS: People were saying that women dominated this year’s awards because there were quite a few in the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize…
LD: That is very funny. I was on a radio show in Britain, and they were talking about women ‘dominating’ the shortlist. But actually there were three women and three men. Apparently that amounts to domination! As a Man Booker judge, I felt (this year) the press was ready and waiting for a controversy about gender. They were ready to manufacture it.
(Literary awards) seem to be more representative in recent years. But that is a recent development. If you remember, the Orange Prize for Fiction, which is for literature by women, was set up in response to a year in which the Man Booker Prize had no women at all in the shortlist. That is when a group of women said ‘this is ridiculous,’ and created the Orange Prize (in 1992, and launched in 1996).
