Dear Editor,
It had not been our intention to offer any response to a recent letter from Mrs Bernadette Persaud in which she commented on the Guyana Prize for Literature and its Awards Ceremony, partly because it is not our policy to entertain discussion about the Judges’ decisions. However, the letter evoked an intervention from another letter writer which tended to give prominence to misconceptions contained in Mrs Persaud’s letter. It then became necessary to set the record straight.
The first issue is an understandable misunderstanding of how the Judges proceeded in declaring the winners of the Best Book and the Best First Book of Fiction. Mrs Persaud wanted to know how is it that Ryhaan Shah beat Mark McWatt for the First Book Prize and yet McWatt, rather than Shah, went on to win the Best Book, which is the bigger Prize. If Shah’s book was better than McWatt’s in the lower category, why was it not also better in the higher one ?
That reading is not accurate. The Jury did not find that Shah’s novel was better. They found three authors worthy of contention for the major prize, i.e., the Best Book – Cyril Dabydeen, McWatt and Shah. Two of these had first published books and also qualified for the lower prize. The Jury therefore shortlisted them for it as well, along with another deserving first novel. They declared the two shortlists as follows.
Best Book of Fiction: Dabydeen’s Drums of My Flesh, McWatt’s Suspended Sentences and Shah’s A Silent Life.
Best First Book of Fiction: McWatt, Shah and Clive Sankardayal’s The Brown Curtains.
They deliberated on the major prize first to decide on who had the best book of all the fiction entered and decided that there were two of them – Dabydeen and McWatt. The Jury then turned to the other category to select the writer of the best of all the First Books entered. They decided that it was McWatt. However, they also elected not to give him the two prizes. Since he had already won in the major category, they decided to look for the next best first book. That was Shah’s novel.
Mrs Persaud may be forgiven for not knowing all of that since these deliberations are not customarily made public. She, however, made two other statements in need of correction. In a rather strange way she congratulated the President and the Prime Minister for leaving the Awards Ceremony soon after it began because they considered other matters more important than mere literature. That is a distorted reflection of what transpired.
The Chairman of the proceedings announced early in the programme that the President would have to leave before the end because of a clashing engagement of great diplomatic and financial importance involving himself, most of his Cabinet, and foreign delegates. This engagement was awaiting his presence while he attended the Guyana Prize. To Mr Jagdeo’s credit he stayed on longer than had been previously arranged so that he could participate in the major activities of the Ceremony, and after some time had passed, asked the Prime Minister to go ahead to represent him at the other event. Some other Cabinet members who were present also went on ahead of him. If the President had so little interest in the Prize it would have been easy for him to send his regrets to the Awards Ceremony and ask the Prime Minister to take his place there. On the contrary, in succeeding years, both President and Prime Minister have attended the Guyana Prize. It is not fair, therefore, to give the impression that they accorded it little importance.
Mrs Persaud also complained that it seems members of the Guyana Prize Management Committee have been installed for life. She asked why have they not changed since the inception, why has the management been given to the University and why is it not entrusted to worthier members who could be more accountable. I am sincerely sorry that Mrs Persaud has such a low opinion of us and I am sure we ought to improve, but the good lady is wrong again about these matters. A look down the years reveals that there have been several changes in membership of this board since 1987. The newest member joined in 2007. There have been replacements and renewals, and there will be more.
Finally, we agree with Mrs Persaud that the unavailability of the winning books continues to be a problem. However, no major literary Prize takes on the responsibility of sale and distribution of books. The Guyana Prize did attempt in some small way to assist in this area without achieving much, but we will reserve a fuller discussion of this for another occasion.
Yours faithfully,
Al Creighton
Guyana Prize Management Committee
