It is often said, with some justification, that there is no current British novelist who shows an interest in, and understanding of business life to match, say, Tom Wolfe. I can think of no fictional representation of the flora and fauna of  London’s financial markets to rival The Bonfire of the Vanities. Nor can I imagine a British novelist who could write a magnificent novel about an estate agent, like Richard Ford’s recent The Lay of the Land.

Most of our novelists are more preoccupied with life after working hours and below the waist. That is understandable, up to a point – even investment bankers make time for affairs, I am told – but limiting. Mr Wolfe and Mr Ford draw great inspiration from business relationships. And the British commercial world could benefit from the pitiless gaze of our best novelists.

This year’s Man Booker prize entries – and as chair of the judges I have read all 110 of them – provide little evidence that this is about to change, though there are some promising and prominent signs of novelistic engagement with business issues on the Indian subcontinent and in the South Pacific. Three of the novels we longlisted present original and thought-provoking takes on aspects of corporate life.

Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People is set in a thinly disguised Bhopal, 15 years after the Union Carbide plant explosion, which killed 3,000 people immediately and perhaps 20,000 over time. Sinha has in fact created a new city – Khaufpur, roughly translatable as “city of fear” – complete with its own highly plausible website at www.khaufpur.com . I imagine it will attract a few hits from the corporate affairs department of Dow Chemical, the former Union Carbide’s present owners.

Ms Sinha’s is a powerful fantasy. The plot is woven around the post-explosion court cases and attempts to hold the company to account. The authorial voice is that of a boy who walks on all fours following a spinal malformation caused by the chemical leak. And, though fantastical at times, it comes complete with credible corporate lawyers and corrupt politicians.

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a different can of worms entirely. Its principal subject matter is the reaction of a Muslim in America to the US response to the events of September 11 2001. The eponymous hero, a Princeton graduate, works in New York for Underwood Samson, a consultancy undertaking corporate valuations for private equity houses. (There is, of course, no conceivable relationship between Underwood Samson and Hamid’s – and indeed my – former employer, McKinsey.) His portrayal of this dimension of corporate life is sharp, plausible and not wholly unsympathetic. It should be said that it is not his consulting experience that drives him in a dangerous political direction. Aggressive airport security plays a larger role than asset stripping.

Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones of New Zealand, deals with the aftermath of another corporate disaster, the closure of the Australian copper mine in Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea. The mine, ultimately owned by Rio Tinto, remains closed and it is fair to say the closure has political rather than business origins. The mine and its owners are shadowy presences as we ex­perience the lives of villagers caught up in intermittent bitter fighting bet­ween the government’s forces and rebel guerrillas, but we are obliged to reflect on the corporate responsibility of corporations whose investments so radically change the life of a remote society.

These are all strong, well-written novels, as are the others on the list, and I should emphasise that business content is not a judging criterion in this or any other year. My point is that it is hard to identify books by domestic authors that so directly address the ethical, social and political dimensions of corporate life.

In What was Lost, Catherine O’Flynn, also longlisted, writes lovingly (no, really) about life behind the scenes at an out-of-town shopping mall in the English Midlands. Barrie Sherwood’s Escape from Amsterdam does the same for theme parks, this time in Japan. While Marina Lewycka, of Ukrainian tractor fame, understands horribly well the low-life economy of migrant workers from eastern Europe picking strawberries and strangling chickens. She was alert to the human misery of these lives and the dubious practices of gangmasters well before the news desks picked up on the story.

But British boardrooms and dealing floors still lack their chroniclers. Rupert Murdoch has appeared thinly disguised in a Bond film, but not so far on the fictional page. Where is the great hedge fund novel of our time? There is not even a modest short story on the thrills and spill of the funds of funds sector that I could recommend to my students. There must be a novel in the travails of the airline industry, centring perhaps on the internal angst of a price-fixer whose conscience forces her to become a whistleblower to the competition authorities. A movie deal would surely follow, with Mike Myers cast as Richard Branson.

There must be a rich seam of creativity to be mined in the life and loves of a £30m a year arbitrage trader, and the quant desk guys have been having a particularly racy time recently. If the private equity industry really wants to enhance its transparency and promote public understanding of its good works, maybe a Kohlberg Kravis Roberts writer-in-residence scheme would illuminate some hitherto dark corners. It is a great pity Sir David Walker, who chaired a review into the private equity industry, did not think to include such a recommendation in his recent report.

The writer is chairman of the judges for the Man Booker prize for the best novel by a Commonwealth or Irish writer and is director of the London School of Economics

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