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47 Chapter 2 Reportage in the U.K. A Hidden Genre? Jenny MCKay When AlexandRa FulleR won the world’s most prestigious award for literary reportage in 2005, her book was hailed as “a spellbinding literary achievement.” Few British readers got to know this, even though Fuller was born in Britain, and her book Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (2005), for which the award was made, was published by Penguin, a publishing house that originated in Britain. The reason British readers didn’t know was that the award received “next to no mention” in the British press.1 I found out about it by accident when I was talking to Penguin about books for a new University of Stirling undergraduate course titled “Journalism and Literature.” Penguin mentioned Daniel Bergner, saying that his book Soldiers of Light (2004) had been shortlisted for an international prize called the Lettre Ulysses Award for literary reportage.2 I was intrigued both by the fact of its existence and by the fact that I hadn’t heard of it before. When I found out more, I realized that for a reader with my tastes and professional interests as a lecturer in journalism, it served the same purpose that the Booker Prize shortlist serves for those whose preference is for reading contemporary fiction in English. Both prizes act as guides to some of the best books currently being published in their genre. One difference is that the contenders for the Lettre Ulysses Award (which was presented annually from 2000 to 2006) were all books of reportage, that is to say, they dealt with real events and the real world; another is that several of these books were published in a language other than English. Indeed one of the benefits of being shortlisted for the prize was that, as a result, funds might become available for translation into other languages. The organizers of the prize were surprised by the lack of interest on the part of the British press, though it demonstrates the invisibility of reportage in the U.K., a point made by Isabel Hilton, one of the U.K.’s most respected journalists and chair of the award’s international, polyglot jury in 2005. “Reportage is a critically neglected form,” she says.3 48 Jenny MCKay International versus British Literary Reportage There are, though, countries where reportage is valued, and sometimes even feared, for the contribution it can make to public knowledge as well as literary satisfaction. If you happen to be British and doubt this, remember that the award’s first winner in 2003 was Anna Politkovskaya, who, it is widely believed, was murdered for her courageous reporting in the former Soviet Union, and Chechnya in particular. A quarter of an hour spent browsing the Lettre Ulysses Award website is an antidote to the sorry mediocrity that is commonly described by those who comment on the British press. As the renowned Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński said in his keynote address at the ceremony for that first Lettre Ulysses Award, “a reporter should be a careful observer, sensitive to seemingly banal details,” open to others, and imbued with “respect for another man, his dignity and worth.” For Kapuściński, who died in 2007, the art of reportage is the art of noticing, and he spoke about the distinguished history of reportage, the importance of being an eyewitness, about the significance of reportage as a way for cultures to learn about one other, and about the consequent responsibility carried by those who write reportage. He observed that to do their job well, journalists require “passion, curiosity about the world and [about] people, an appetite for information, diligence and devotion”; and if they do it well, they help to promote what he calls “decent knowledge” rather than false stereotypes. He also said that “good reportage is . . . so popular in the modern world.”4 As I read Kapuściński’s words and those of the jury members and keynote speakers from subsequent years, I realized their tone was unfamiliar to me. Yes, there were criticisms of the limited language and stereotypical thought that journalists are guilty of using. But there was also a note of pride that was inspirational, a suggestion that it really matters to humanity that good reportage is written by humane, intelligent, sensitive, curious, persistent reporters . It is reminiscent of the belief of that great twentieth-century American reporter Martha Gellhorn, who said that “honorable reporting should be...

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