Antonia Fraser

When the Man Booker Prize announced that Americans would be considered for the prestigious award for the first time last week, the news was largely greeted with consternation: 2010 winner Howard Jacobson said it was the “wrong decision,” while current frontrunner Jim Crace suggested the prize would “lose something.” Yesterday, the controversy continued when the acclaimed novelist and biographer Lady Antonia Fraser has cut her ties with the prize.

Fraser had recently accepted an invitation to join the Booker’s new “e-council,” an “informal advisory network” made up of past winners and other authors. As The Bookseller reported back in August, the council will suggest both judges and authors for those judges to consider. (It’s called an “e-council” because members will not meet in person and will instead communicate via email.

Fraser told the Evening Standard that she had chosen to resign because she “was not warned about [the decision to extend the prize] when [she] was asked to join in August.” Fraser has a long history with the Man Booker Prize: she was a judge in 1970 and 1971 and was involved in the decision to award J.G. Farrell the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.

Flamenta Rocco, the Man Booker Prize’s chief administrator, was somewhat dismissive, telling the Standard that “I haven’t heard from Lady Antonia about her fears but she was invited only recently to join our e-Council. It’s not yet fully up and running and we’ve always had American authors.”