Salon

This year's shortlist for the Open Russia Booker Prize, sponsored by jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky through his Open Russia foundation, has provoked more angry responses than any other shortlist in the award's brief but turbulent history. The list, announced earlier this month, includes six novels: Denis Gutsko's "Without a Trace" (Bez Puti-Sleda); Boris Yevseyev's "A Smallish Novel" (Romanchik); Oleg Yermakov's "Canvas" (Kholst); Anatoly Naiman's "Kablukov"; Roman Solntsev's "The Golden Bottom" (Zolotoye Dno) and "Minus Lavrikov," two books that the jury combined into a single nomination; and Yelena Chizhova's "The Criminal" (Prestupnitsa).

The controversy began in June when the jury unveiled its long list of 22 novels, having slashed the original list of nominees by two-thirds. Given the unusual bounty of the last literary year, their work was hard indeed. Such impressive works as Dmitry Bykov's terrorism fantasy "The Evacuator," Viktor Pelevin's "Holy Book of the Werewolf" and Mikhail Shishkin's philosophical saga "Maidenhair" had all appeared within the time frame -- not to mention Alexei Ivanov's hugely successful "The Gold of the Mutiny," which didn't even make the long list. With such wealth at their disposal, the jury's decision puzzled many observers.

The jury's chairman, Vasily Aksyonov, a doyen prose writer and last year's Booker winner, said that the choice was defined by the "priority of real life." Other jury members concurred; speaking at a round table just before the shortlist was announced, critic Alla Marchenko said, "Our life now is such that fantasy writing is unnecessary." If the rest of the jury shared her sentiments, the exclusion of Bykov, Pelevin and Shishkin is not surprising. But how it corresponds to general trends in the Russian literary mainstream -- something that the Booker has always claimed to uphold -- is another matter.

Some were unhappy with this year's Booker politics from the start. Andrei Nemzer, a well-known critic, said at the round table that the exclusion of 40 novels from the original list of nominees sent a clear message to publishers and authors: It is the immortals of the jury, not readers, who get to decide what counts as literature and what doesn't.

To put things in perspective, it's worth noting that two of the world's most prestigious literary prizes were also awarded recently. The Man Booker prize went to Irish novelist John Banville, who beat such eminent rivals as Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro, while the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to British playwright Harold Pinter, also raising questions -- why not Tom Stoppard, for example?

Some critics have said that Western literary prizes are aimed at specific books, not at any ultimate goal, while here, jurors want to make a point. The results, as this year proves, may be rather sad for the nation's literature.