Complaining about the Man Booker Prize is an important British tradition. Since its inception—as simply the Booker Prize, in 1969—it has been criticized for its imperialist overtones, its unwillingness to take risks, and, above all, its corrupt insularity. Though any writer from the Commonwealth was eligible, the winner was determined by a small and incestuous circle of London elites. In 2001, the comic novelist A.L. Kennedy described the Booker as being decided by “who knows who, who’s sleeping with who, who’s selling drugs to who, who’s married to who, whose turn it is.”



In recent years, however, the main complaint about the Booker is that it is not insular enough. In 2013, it was announced that, starting in 2014, Americans would be eligible for the prize. The uproar was immediate, lasting, and very British. Julian Barnes called it “daft.” A.S. Byatt worried that the identity of the prize had been diluted. Granta editor Anne Meadows wondered if it would come at the cost of lesser-known writers. “It means the prize will be dominated by big publishing houses who maybe aren’t taking as many risks,” she told the BBC. “It could make it incredibly elitist.”



On Wednesday, the Booker released its fourth shortlist since opening the field to Americans and its first since Paul Beatty became the first American to win the prize last year. It represents the worst fears of all those who bemoaned the decision to let the Yanks in. Three of the six books were written by Americans: George Saunders’s first novel Lincoln In the Bardo; Paul Auster’s 4321, which seems to have been selected because it is 1,000 pages long and because Auster is inexplicably popular abroad; and debut novelist Emily Fridlund’s History of Wolves. The list is rounded out by two books by British writers—perennial nominee Ali Smith’s Autumn and debut novelist Fiona Mozley’s Elmet—and the British-Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.



With two debut novelists on the short list, the Booker is clinging to its reputation for breaking out authors and for rewarding the not-yet-famous. But only barely. Four years after first announcing the decision to open the prize to Americans, the Booker is virtually indistinguishable from its competitors. It is exactly what many feared it would become: corporate and daft.



The decision to include Americans—to effectively turn the prize into an award for the best English language novel of the year—was almost certainly made for economic reasons. The prestige of literary prizes is largely dependent on sponsors. Those that come without a cash component, like the National Book Critics Circle awards, can’t compete with those that do, like the National Book Awards. Sponsors, in turn, want to ensure they’re supporting the biggest and best literary prize.