The Booker Prize’s ‘Readability’ Controversy

This year’s winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced today. The British prize goes to “the very best book of the year” written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Past winners have been propelled to international celebrity overnight, with the winning books selling hundreds of thousands of copies around the world. But this year’s shortlist has generated a new complaint. Critics of the prize say Booker Prize judges have begun valuing “readability” above artistic excellence. Patrik Henry Bass,  a  Takeaway contributor and senior editor at Essence  magazine, talks about the controversy over the prize.