“Some people won’t buy your book unless they see that winner thing on the cover. I am not sure if it is all good – but that is the way the industry works”. This statement was made by award-winning author Helon Habila in an interview with African Writing Online. His comment speaks to the anxiety of many readers who are anxious to know if a book has won an award before reading it as, presumably, the more famous the author the better the book.
Since reading this, I have been wondering about the great books we miss and the writers we ought to embrace but neglect because their works have not received “official” recognition – not to mention the knowledge we miss out on – because of this notion of “award-winning equals good.”
So many award-winning authors have one time or the other failed by delivering below our expectations. While growing up, I remember falling in love with the works of writers like Stephen King, the renowned king of horror novels; John Grisham (the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award recipient), and Sidney Sheldon (an Academy Award-winning American writer) among others. I began to know them with the mind-set of award-winning. But some of them have sometimes let me down – take, for instance, Grisham’s A Painted House. (I want to believe some of your favourite award-winning authors might have failed you at one time or the other too!)
I recently decided to read any book I come across – whether the writer has won an award or not – just based on the synopsis printed on its back. You would be amazed if I should tell you how much I had missed in neglecting some books because their authors are not award winners: from Femi Oguntuase’s Scoundrels in Uniform to Bartholomew Gill’s The Death of an Irish Tinker and a host of other foreign and Nigerian novels.
Prizes have come to assume much significance in the Nigerian literary industry. For an author to be taken seriously, he or she has to have a string of prizes to their name. The point here is that the way the industry works, as noted by Habila, is a problematic standpoint that needs immediate attention not only from the players in the industry but also us, the consumers.
This view was once shared by Laura Miller, a senior writer for Salon in her article on what makes a book great. According to her, some so-called great books, otherwise known as award-winners, if well scrutinised, would come out not to be near winning an award at all! In her another related article, Miller was of the opinion that prizes are now “the means by which many people now decide which books to buy, when they bother to buy books at all”. In the critiquing piece, she showed her disgust at the way awards are being churned out these days. In fact, Miller was so bothered about awards in the UK that she compared the National Best Books Awards as “vanity book awards – a new twist in the age-old practice of profiting off the dreams of aspiring writers”.
Apparently, we need to start embracing our writers, awards or no awards. Come to think of it, as prolific and entertaining as Cyprian Ekwensi was, he only received one award over the course of his sixty-year writing career. If we continue to read books based on the number of awards won by their authors, Ekwensi would be quickly forgotten – and how bad would that be? Similarly, with all the books Chinua Achebe wrote, many expected him to be crowned a Nobel Laureate, but this was not the case. This does not detract from the excellence of books such as Things Fall Apart, Chike and the River, Arrow of God and Anthills of the Savannah among others.
Kola Onadipe was another great writer known for his skills in putting engaging stories together for the reading pleasure of children. With over twenty-two books to his credit including Koku Baboni, Sugar Girl and The Boy Slave, Onadipe never received any awards. But the quality of his work speaks for itself. If award-winning mind-set held sway in Onadipe’s time as it does today, maybe his work would never have been known.
Aside from the money made from publishing books or the need to tell stories, a big reason behind writers finding themselves in the world of writing is the desire to be famous. And being famous these days seems to stem from the number of awards accrued during your career. Nevertheless, we need to start encouraging unknown writers by giving their books a chance. The award-winners of today did not start out as winners, but were encouraged to persevere by the people who read their works regardless.
It is time we stopped looking to see ‘award-winning’ on the cover of a book before reading it. Besides, you never can tell: such books might not be as good as you expect. We as readers should let the focus be on the joy of reading, not minding whether the author is famous or not.
What prompts you to read a book by an author whose work you have never come across before? Let us know in the comments.
Author: DAVE AGBOOLA
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