The Man Booker International Prize list has been announced for 2007.
Not surprisingly there are no Italian novelists included. Not surprisingly as the English-language publishing world takes a lot of interest in ‘international’ but not ‘foreign’ literature. There are plenty of great living novelists in Italy, but few who manage to get published in English. Walk into my local bookshop and I can get works, in Italian, by authors from England, America, Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Holland, Albania, and countless other countries.

It does throw open to question the worth of having an ‘international’ prize like the Man Booker, though. It’s like those intriguing American sporting events, the world series, but extended to anglophone countries.

For what it’s worth, the list of authors nominated for this year’s prize are:

Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michel Tournier

Count to yourself the number of above authors whose mother tongue is not English, and smile wistfully.