The annual prize for fiction is always given to an original work. Unusually, the Daily Mail has been nominated for a series of sensational front pages, which in their entirety comprise what one judge calls a ‘compelling narrative’.
The judge, well-known author and literary figure Paige Turner, explained her reasoning to LCD Views.
“We look for truly innovative creative work,” she said. “Traditionally we only award the prize to novels; but the world moves on, and literary fiction can be found everywhere, even on the front pages of once reputable newspapers.”
So please explain the ‘compelling narrative’.
“The Daily Mail has cleverly woven several threads together,” said Turner. “But the most recent twist in the never-ending story comes from the predominant racism strand. This focuses on a hapless loser called Jeremy, and his endearing attempts to lead a largely irrelevant band of brothers. The Mail calls them by a variety of names, but usually goes for the descriptive route. So they are lefties, traitors, anything derogatory. The strength in this strand of the story comes from the fact that it could easily be mistaken for a genuine political movement.”
And what does it have to do with racism?
“Well, Jeremy is constantly accused of racism,” Turner explains. “Whether he is actually racist, the tale never tells, but the implication hangs in the air like pipe smoke. In the latest instalment, Jeremy is discovered to have laid a wreath in a cemetery where terrorist victims also lie. This is part of his anti-Semitic back-story. It has a clear parallel with current events, where a real-life bumbling fool has made deliberate, or at least ill-advised, Islamophobic remarks.”
Turner also mentions a recurrent theme in the Mail’s work, a highly imaginative apocalyptic narrative about evil foreigners (“migrants” in the text) coming to destroy a fictional empire by suckling on Britannia’s teat.
We await the shortlisting with bated breath, reading glasses at the ready. Let us hope the Daily Mail can sustain its remarkable output of high quality fiction.