What Makes a Novel Booker-Worthy? ‘Indestructibility’

“The judges are given five months to read upwards of 150 books, then they reread the longlist of 12 and, in a final round, go back once more over the shortlist of six. … The Man Booker is not so much a contest of literary merit as a test of indestructibility … The winner is the book that takes the longest time to fall apart.”