The Necessity of Non-Genre Writing

Stephen Mitchelmore, "'Foreign to the resources of literature'":

The shock is a minor one and this is not a post to complain of its omission or to speculate on the competence of the judges [of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize] and instead to wonder if the failure of such novels to walk away with such a title is a sign of the necessity and vitality of non-genre writing, in which form and content struggle into existence on their own merit rather than rushing to adopt a generic mould for safe passage, and that it is only committed amateurs on the sidelines, those not on a career path or with corporate sponsors to appease, who are able to subject themselves to the full force of writing as a presence in itself.