Edward St Aubyn said that writers had an unhealthy obsession with literary prizes

The Man Booker prize is a “torture instrument” that “draws attention to itself at the expense of the psychological wellbeing” of writers, one of the country’s most respected authors has said.

Edward St Aubyn, whose books are to be turned into a drama series involving Benedict Cumberbatch and Sam Mendes, said that writers had an unhealthy obsession with literary prizes.

He described the Booker as a kind of “machine that devours” authors and said that it helped to create a “mentality of corrosive, unceasing comparison” within the writing fraternity.

St Aubyn, whose novel Mother’s Milk was once shortlisted for the prize and whose latest, Lost for Words, has won this year’s Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, said that writers were always comparing themselves with