Para que serve um prémio literário?

Tendo como exemplo o Prémio Booker, que este ano celebra a sua 40ª edição , Robert McCrum discute o impacto que um prémio literário tem no que lemos.

Alguns excertos:

«One of the Booker's best functions has been to promote a national conversation about what we look for in new fiction and what we think its purposes might be.

(...)

...it now successfully promotes a global readership in British and Commonwealth fiction, from China to Peru. Television and the worldwide web transmit longlist, shortlist and prize-night news to places whose idea of the British novel was previously confined to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

(...)

the prize has helped to sell new fiction by unknown writers and to nourish the garden of British (and Commonwealth) creativity.

(...)

...despite some notable duds, over which we shall pass in discreet silence, the Booker has posted an impressive list of winners. By any standards, a roster that includes VS Naipaul's In A Free State, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and JM Coetzee's Disgrace is evidence of, at the very least, good judgment and good luck.»


Mais desenvolvimentos no Guardian.