The battle of the books

THE Spanish writer, Javier Marias, author of Tommorrow In The Battle Think Of Me, has won this year's IMPAC prize with A Heart So White, a coolly surreal exploration of sexual secrets. Juan, the narrator, tells his story with a deliberately dead pan almost pedantic thoroughness, The theme is the various levels of deception, particularly of self, which often play a role in one's sexual life. In a way this is a sophisticated detective story. Juan, a professional translator himself engaged in a civilised, almost semidetached arrangement which passes as a marriage, at times sounds more bored than fascinated with his excursions into hidden lives which also include that of his much married father.

Surely the most important test of any literary prize is whether it will excite readers? Encouraging the act of reading is far more important than stimulating debate. Literary prizes tend to incite the latter. Very few novels have become best sellers after winning prizes. Without wishing to appear mawkish, one of the great joys of reading is wanting to share a particular book with others. A Heart So White, for which Marias wins £75,000 while his translator, Margaret Jull Costa will be awarded £25,000, is not one of those novels.

Fiction frequently becomes caught in the debate of the good versus the important. Some novels succeed because of the importance of themes and messages which can outweigh and for compensate for artistic shortcomings. Two of this year's IMPAC contenders, Mistry's Such A Fine Balance and Duong Thu Huong's Novel Without A Name are as good as the are important and I believe both will stand the test of time.

By far the longest of the short listed titles, Such A Fine Balance, dwarfs most of the others in terms of quality as well as size and, of course, reputation. This is a big hearted, flawed, 19th century style, human comedy which engages far more than it irritates. It tells the individual stories of Dina, a tough, no longer quite so young widow and two tailors who come to work for her. It also tells the story of modern India, at times, even heavy handedly. Mistry was also shortlisted for his first novel, Such a Long Journey (1991), undeniably a better book. But having written two fine novels as well as From Firozsha Baag, an outstanding collection of short stories, Mistry is a major writer. His presence on this list also underlines the phenomenal quality and depth of modern Indian fiction.

Duong Thu Huong's Novel Without A Name is set during the closing chapters of the Vietnam War. It is a stark, powerful book - all the more so because of her war involvement as a communist youth brigade leader - told through a male narrator. True, it walks a very narrow path between fiction and memoir but that is another debate. Had I been picking the winner, it would have been between this harrowing account and A Fine Balance.

Charm does not decide prizes but it does attract readers. Lars Gustafsson's A Tiler's Afternoon and Antonio Tabucchi's Declares Pereira are both small novels; almost novellas, featuring Everyman style figures. In Tiler's Afternoon an elderly tiler ponders the meaning of life. The narrative is random and flatly written.

Tabucchi's is more elegant, at times lyric. His anti hero is a disillusioned journalist dithering between survival and the greater issue of the truth in Salazar's Portugal. Had Nooteboom's The Following, Stony won last year, such a win would have worked out at roughly £10,000 a page.

Alan Warner's Morvern Callar belongs to a world as surreal as Marias's. The narrator is a young woman who virtually walks over her suicide lover's remains and even pretends to be the author of his novel. An at focal mixture of dialect and lyricism, this is repetitive, unconvincing, black, arthouse violence. You either love its designer trendiness or you stand alone - like me.

Perhaps because there are so many good novels around it is always possible to criticise literary shortlists. The strength of American fiction is well known. This makes the inclusion of AJ Verdelle's The Good Negress, about a black girl in 1960s Virginia and Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues, both highly derivative and obviously politically pitched narratives, all the more disappointing.

Interestingly the judges chose a novel about dark obsession and voyeurism over the big issue narratives. What makes a literary prize flourish? The appeal of the winning book or the heart of the prize itself? Such is the international dimension of the goodwill operation behind this prize, that the contenders themselves might well slip into the shadows.