This book has the slight ignominious honor of being the very first Booker Prize winner. And with that accolade comes the absolute derision of worst tendencies of critical culture, especially in the UK. I think a lot about who wins prizes, not because it’s necessarily a comment on quality, but as a kind of marker on taste and esteem of a given year. There’s barely a Booker Prize winner that I would consider undeniably the best book of that year — Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies, JG Farrell’s Troubles and Siege of Krishnapur, Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings — and I think all years are subject to taste. And even in this year, 1969 – Newby beat out an Iris Murdoch novel, a Muriel Spark novel, and there were several other great novels not nominate — Paul Scott’s Day of the Scorpion, Barry Hines’s A Kestrel for a Knave, and one of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time books.
All that said: this is actually a good novel. It has a challenging and complex plot. Its lead character is complex, decidedly not a hero, and is asked to consider probing moral situations and his reactions to them are familiar and interesting.
The plot asks us to follow Townrow, a man of disputed national origin (is he English or Irish) traipsing around Egypt at the time of the Suez takeover. He’s helping a widow (of his old friend) whose husband has recently died, but his flippancy (or arrogance) with local officials and his rampant alcohol abuse put in him in suspicions over the death. It’s a book that asks English people to reckon with the actions of their empire, not simply passively watch as it goes away. It’s a lot like Graham Greene’s A Quiet American, without the comfort of Americans out Heroding Britain.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Something-Answer-First-Booker-Winner/dp/0571348270/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1551981225&sr=8-1)