An Untold Secret

I have always wanted to read a Booker Prize Winner book. Especially when our own Arundhati Roy won the award for ‘The God of Small Things’ in 1997. Recently I read a book by Bernice Rubens, who incidentally is a Booker Prize Awardee for the book ‘The Elected Member’ in 1970. Although I was not able to get that book, I was amazed at the simple fluent language that was used. There was no euphemism or flowery language anywhere in the book. The book is called ‘Yesterday in the Back Lane’. It speaks of a young teenage girl, of a middle class family, who kills a man who had interfered with her. It seems that was the phrase used in those days. Being the only daughter of simple-minded folks, she hides it. Even when a wrong man is accused of the crime and hanged, she keeps mum. But the crux of the story is how she suffers in silence. Her nose starts bleeding whenever she encounters anything related to that incident. She punishes herself completely. She remains unmarried, fearing that marriage would bring her happiness and lives to satisfy her parents. But in the end her mother rejects her. She hopes for salvation one day.

The ‘Man Booker Prize’ is a dream for all fiction writers. Their long, lonely hard work is finally recognised. The celebrated publisher Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape set it up in 1968. It was then called Booker Brothers. It now has two related prizes, The Booker Russian Novel Prize and The Caine Prize for African Writing.