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 […]