The Man Booker prize has strong years and weak years. There have been ones when the judges have succeeded in identifying what is most interesting in English-language fiction and others when the task has been comprehensively flunked. With Robert Macfarlane as chairman, 2013 promises to be very good; 2011, which was in fact a strong year for fiction, was widely agreed to be a catastrophe; 2012, while an improvement, was disappointing in that it reflected the conventional tastes of academics.