An Indian vote in Booker Prize jury

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Bharat Tandon

Indian-origin academic Bharat Tandon, who is an expert on Jane Austen, has been named a judge for next year’s Man Booker Prize. Before him, Indian-origin TV and radio broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli was a judge for Booker prize in 2008.
Dr Tandon is joined by the star of hit British television series Downton Abbey, Dan Stevens, broadcaster and historian Amanda Foreman and academic Dinah Birch. The five-member jury is headed by Times Literary Supplement editor Sir Peter Stothard.
Dr Tandon specialises in teaching British literature after 1700 and American literature after 1900. The writer and reviewer has lectured at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford on topics as diverse as Jane Austen and David Mamet, Charles Dickens and Don DeLillo. His first book, Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation, was published in 2003 to rave reviews. The interest in the Booker jury has spiked due to the presence of actor Dan Stevens, who studied English literature at Cambridge University, also is an editor-at-large for the online literary quarterly The Junket.
Sir Peter said the judging panel would approach the job with “enthusiasm and expectation.”
“We have two of Britain’s finest professional critics, with expertise in novels from the 18th to the 21st century, a distinguished actor who is also an accomplished literary critic and an historian who is one of the most successful biographers of our time. We are all looking forward to a feisty Man Booker year - with a background of Jane Austen, John Ruskin, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, the Times Literary Supplement and even a hint of the library at Downton Abbey,” he added.
Birch, who teaches literature at University of Liverpool, specialises in Victorian literature and is an expert on Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters and Alferd Tennyson. She has written two books on John Ruskin.
Foreman, an award-winning historian, wrote the book Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire which was adapted into Oscar-winning film The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley.
This year’s Booker judging panel, headed by former director-general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, Dame Stella Rimington, was at the centre of a controversy over the literary quality of the shortlist.
The controversy had led to the founding of a new literary award, titled The Literature Prize, to maintain the supremacy of literary expertise.
The judges will announce the Booker longlist of 12 or 13 titles in July and the shortlist of six titles will be revealed in September. The winner of the 2012 Booker Prize will be announced on October 16.
This year’s £50,000 prize was won by Julian Barnes for his novel The Sense Of An Ending.