Kolkata: Literary awards like the 'Booker' and the 'French Goncourt Prize' are destroying literature in a post-modern world where the concept of high culture is fast disappearing, Nobel laureate litterateur Sir V S Naipaul said this evening (Nov 18, 2004).

''Prizes like the 'Booker' are destroying literature. It looks for a good commercial, middle-of-the-road book. It is supposed to rescue books from non-entity, but books that are awarded the prize die very quickly,'' Naipaul said during an interactive session on the occasion of the launch of his latest novel 'Magic Seeds' at the Oxford Bookstore in Kolkata.

France's highest literary award, the 'Goncourt Prize', promoted works that were 'antiquated' novels, he told an audience comprising the litterati, academics, writers, publishers, drama personalities and even some members of the diplomatic corps.

Describing himself as 'one who has given his life to literature,' the author of 'A House for Mr Biswas' said that he found it 'depressing' that it was no longer possible to make a living out of creating literature. ''These days, prize-winning novels deal with oddities, not humanity.''

On the possible future subjects of literature, Sir Naipaul replied with a chuckle, ''lesbianism, perhaps. The subject, after all, had not yet been properly explored, or, perhaps, the subject of Siamese twins.''