Lost For Words

Anyone cynical about literary prizes – the books that win them, the committees that award them – will laugh out loud at this delightful satire. St Aubyn has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize himself, and has literary pedigree, but as his novel hilariously demonstrates, notions of what constitutes literary pedigree are as fickle as the wind.

Malcolm Craig MP, the philistine Scottish backbencher asked to chair the judges of the Elysian Prize, wants a winner from north of the border, so he champions written in impenetrable Scottish vernacular. A second judge insists that the winning novel must be socially relevant, a third that it must adhere to the canons of serious literature, whatever they are.

Then there is the actor Tobias, the token celebrity on the committee, forever missing judging meetings because he is in a touring production of

Nothing is too ridiculous for St Aubyn’s waspish pen, not even the inclusion on the shortlist of an Indian cookery book which has been submitted in error. It’s knockabout stuff, a cartoon in prose. But what redeems the book from coarseness, and makes you smile and smile and smile, is the elegance of the writing. Seldom was so much pretentiousness skewered so stylishly.