Son of a Kashmiri doctor .....
Give cash to Refugee Council, he tells Mail on Sunday Fiachra Gibbons and Claire Armitstead, Friday November 21, 2003, The Guardian: Making an enemy of the Daily Mail is a little like putting your head in a lion's mouth and then inviting it to bite. But yesterday Hari Kunzru, one of Britain's most promising young novelists, put two fingers up to the tabloid and its Sunday sister by refusing to accept a literary prize they sponsor. Having won the �5,000 John Llewellyn Rhys award for his debut, The Impressionist, Kunzru rejected it because of what he called the the papers' consistent "hostility towards black and Asian British people". He claimed the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, which sponsors the prize, both "pursue an editorial policy of vilifying and demonising refugees and asylum-seekers ... As the child of an immigrant, I am only too aware of the poisonous effect of the Mail's editorial line. The atmosphere of prejudice it fosters translates into violence, and I have no wish to profit from it." Not since 1972 when John Berger gave half his winnings from the Booker to the Black Panthers, and rubbished book prizes as glorified horse races, has literary London witnessed such a dramatic demonstration of writerly conscience. Kunzru, the son of a Kashmiri doctor and an English mother, was not at the awards ceremony to drop the bombshell. Instead, the unenviable task of reading his short, explosive statement fell to his agent Jonny Geller. Geller reportedly negotiated a six-figure deal for the book, which has already won the Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham awards, as well as being shortlisted for the Guardian First Book and Whitbread prizes. Geller then had to sit down for lunch next to Mail executives, as the literati gathered at the Reform Club struggled to digest the implications of Kunzru's swipe at papers not known for forgiving or forgetting those who cross them. The 33-year-old author - who was at a family wedding in New Delhi - only discovered he had made the shortlist last week. He was not even aware that his publishers had entered him for the prize, the second oldest literary award in Britain. Having thanked the judges, Kunzru explained in his statement: "The Impressionist is a novel about the absurdity of a world in which race is the main determinant of a person's identity. My hope is that one day the sponsors of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize will join with the judges in appreciating this." In the meantime, he asked for the prize money to be donated to the Refugee Council. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
