Literary prizes come in more shapes and sizes than ever before: we have prizes that echo the Man Booker, and prizes that set out not to be the Man Booker; we have prizes for first novels, second novels, crime novels that don’t feature violence against women, and, more satirically, a prize for “bad sex in fiction”. Why do we need so many? Do we need them at all? And how do prizes work not only for writers but for those people who do all the reading (and sometimes arguing): the judges? The TLS's Michael Caines chairs a lively discussion between Toby Lichtig, the fiction editor of the TLS, and Alex Clark, a critic and regular prize judge/chair. This live event was a collaboration with BookMachine. 

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