Irvine Welsh has launched a stinging attack on The Booker Prize calling it a "highly imperialist-orientated" literary award and claiming that the organisers had failed to deal with a problem of "anti-Scottishness".
Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, was addressing the Edinburgh writers' conference and says that the Booker puts upper-class Englishness as a cultural yardstick and the failure to refute accusations of anti-Scottishness was a sign of "arrogance" and "intellectual enfeeblement".
Welsh, noted for featuring lots of Scottish dialect in his novels, said: "The Booker prize's contention to be an inclusive, non-discriminatory award could be demolished by anybody with even a rudimentary grasp of sixth-form sociology."
He claimed that the winners have alternated "between largely upper-middle-class English writers and citizens of the former colonies, presumably to stamp legitimacy on this 'global accolade'".
The award, he said, was "based on the conceit that upper-class Englishness is the cultural yardstick against which all literature must be measured".
Welsh was the main speaker at a debate on nationalism. He claimed that that the rise of globalised culture meant it "would be difficult for Trainspotting to be published today by a London-based publisher. The market has become much more defined and Trainspotting doesn't fit into any defined slot."
It's not the first time the Booker Prize has been criticised. Julian Barnes, the winner in 2011, once described the selection process as "posh bingo".
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