There was one man everyone
wanted to see at the Guardian
Hay festival: John Updike.
And the elder statesman of
American letters had nothing
but praise for British novelists

British writers have nothing to fear from their American cousins, conceded John Updike while holding court at the Guardian Hay literary festival.

Speaking to The Guardian on May 30, Updike dismissed horrified reactions to the suggestion, made several years ago, that the Booker prize be opened to American authors.

Alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, Updike is part of a holy trinity of American writers who some consider the greatest living novelists. Understandably, some Brits felt that a transatlantic Booker would be a one-horse race.

But Updike told the Guardian, “I don’t think Americans would have taken over the Booker prize.” He noted that Ian McEwan’s Atonement was “a staggering book [that] no American could have published.”

“There is no reason,” he added, tempering the implication of a British inferiority complex, “why some paunchy American should be able to enter a British prize.”

Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch and Hanif Kureishi were also singled out for the ascendent writer’s praise.

Writing about the interview he conducted with Updike during the festival, McEwan returned the compliment by describing him as “the finest novelist writing in English today.”