THE shortlist for the 2020 Booker Prize for fiction has been published. There are six authors on the list. Four are ‘persons of colour’. One is a white woman, writing – to quote the Booker Prize website –

‘A daring, passionate and terrifying novel about a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change.’ 

The final author is the token white man on the list, Douglas Stuart. But before you choke on your soy latte at the microaggression of featuring a white man on the shortlist, let me reassure you: Douglas Stuart is a gay Scotsman, writing about an alcoholic single mum and her son as he grows up in a Glasgow ravaged by Thatcher’s cuts. So that’s all right then!