Who’s Afraid of the Booker Prize?
by Peter Cowlam
Description
Winner of the 2015 Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction.
For Alistair Wye, assistant to ‘top’ novelist Marshall Zob, Zob makes just two mistakes. First, he plans a commemorative book celebrating the life and work of his dead mentor, John Andrew Glaze, whose theory of ‘literary time’ is of dubious philosophical pedigree. Second, Zob turns the whole literary world on its head through the size of advance he instructs his agent to negotiate for his latest, and most mediocre novel to date. Secretly Wye keeps a diary of Zob’s professional and private life. Comic, resolute, Wye stalks through its every page, scattering his pearls with an imperious hand, while an unsuspecting Zob ensures perfect conditions for the chronicles satire. Set in the relatively safe remove of London’s beau monde in the early 1990s, Who’s Afraid of the Booker Prize? unremittingly debunks the phenomenon of literary celebrity. The plot revolves round a researcher working through an archive of computer discs, emails and faxes, and his own diary recording his reactions to life in proximity of bookish heavyweight Marshall Zob. It’s a roaring satire, in the best English comedic tradition.
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Rights Information
World rights available excluding UK print.
Endorsements
Winner of the 2015 Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction.
Author Biography
Peter Cowlam studied Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts. He has had plays performed at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth, and by the Dartington Playgoers, and has had readings at the State University of New York and for the Theatre West 100 Plays project in Bristol, England.
As a novelist, he has won the Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction twice, most recently in 2018 for his novel New King Palmers, which is at the intersection of old, crumbling empires and new, digital agglomerates.
His other Quagga award was in 2015 for his novel Who's Afraid of the Booker Prize?, a satire on literary celebrity. The Quagga Prize is awarded for independently published works of fiction.
He has had four collections of haikuesque poems published (one in collaboration with Kathryn Kopple), also independently, and as poet and writer of fiction his work has appeared on the Fairlight Books website, in En Bloc, The Battersea Review, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Blue Nib, The Galway Review, Easy Street, Literary Matters, Eunoia Review, The Brown Boat, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Four Quarters Magazine, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Liberal, the Criterion, and others.
Peter Cowlam is the Literary Editor at Ars Notoria (arsnotoria.com). He can be contacted at petercowlam@gmail.com
Copyright Information
Copyright (c) 2013, Peter Cowlam.
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher CentreHouse Press
- Publication Date April 2013
- Orginal LanguageEnglish
- ISBN/Identifier 9781902086057
- Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
- FormatPaperback
- Primary Price 11.99 GBP
- Pages270
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- EditionFirst
- Dimensions8.5 x 5.5 inches
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