Yesterday I wrote about The Morning News’ Tournament of Books on Jacket Copy. It started interestingly, with both an obvious win and an upset. On the no-duh winning side, big fat 2666 by Roberto Bolaño; the come-from behind winner on day two was A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Berniers, which took down the PEN/Faulkner-Award winning Netherland by Joseph O’Neill.
I bet my friend Mark Sarvas was upset about that loss, because he’s been praising Netherland on his site The Elegant Variation for ages. But then comes today, when Mark’s debut novel Harry Revised went mano-a-mano with Booker Award-winning The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. And Harry won.
Congratulations, Mark!
Judge Jonah Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist) didn’t care that Adiga had won a Really Big Award; he just liked reading Mark’s book more. It’s this kind of surprise, subjective measure that makes the Tournament of Books fun.
And it looks like the zombie round is going to be fierce….
