Booker Americana

The October 2012 rule change of the Man Booker prize has probably left a fair amount of literature buffs puzzled. It is now devoid of any political boundaries impeding its way. Whereas previously English language novels from the Commonwealth countries only were eligible for the prize, it is now open to every English language novel, meaning the Americans will be in on the race starting next year.
The Booker prize was initiated by the multinational company Booker McConnell in 1968 as a reaction to the French Prix Goncourt. It has been with us since. Although subject to several controversies (like the time when the committee chairman declared that he had not read James Joyce and Marcel Proust and wouldn't give any prizes to writers like them, ushering Salman Rushdie to label them as anti-Prousts and kill-Joyces), it can be said that the Booker has managed to make a substantial amount of readers lean toward high literature at a time when popularity of commercial books are on the rise. It has succeeded in bringing writers of diverse origins in the limelight.
So it begs the question: will the Booker prize be the same with the Americans now on board? Writers like Philip Hensher have joked that we might as well give up, since how can the commonwealth-ians compete with writers like Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer (and God knows how many other Jonathans), Rick Moody, Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers, among others?
Are Americans better than everyone else? Or is it just that their aggressive culture will undoubtedly grab the focus, and will thereby push down other cultures and nationalities, making them go unnoticed? I mean there are writers like David Mitchell (of “Cloud Atlas” fame) and Zadie Smith around to prove that unique British literature that was in its prime in the 1980s with the lot of Rushdie, Ishiguro, McEwan and Amis among others, is still alive. But will others survive the wind from the opposite side of the Atlantic?
If the Americans were eligible from the start, Peter Carey would've possibly never won the prize the second time, because Franzen's “The Corrections” was just better. And do you think Graham Swift, with all his brilliance, could've stood a chance against David Foster Wallace's “Infinite Jest”?
Another postulation: will the Americans open their Pulitzer to the world? I don't think so.
Literary prizes cannot guarantee the eventual status of a book. They cannot guarantee their permanency. What they can guarantee is, perhaps, modest sales and some awareness of a talent or two. This the Booker has been doing for so long. American bookstores feel the vibe every October and satisfy their customers by providing them with the winning titles in their Americanised covers.
The Booker people, as I like to call them, said that it was either this or creating a separate prize for the US. Did they need to? I mean, Americans weren't protesting about it in front of their High Commissions.
Let's see what happens. Maybe it'll get to be a new Folio prize with more history or, the next Bailey Prize that is also for men, or maybe just another American prize that they could care less about. Whatever it will turn into, I am sure that it won't be the same as before.

Tanha Tamanna Haque studies at Monipur High School, Dhaka.