At a certain level, the question of literature ceases to be one of quality. Once a book has survived hundreds of years of scrutiny with its reputation intact, made it onto "greatest books" lists, or, as in this case, been shortlisted for the Man Booker, it's a pretty safe bet that it will be good. It will be well-written, even engaging and enjoyable.
At that point, I don't ask myself whether the book will be good. I ask myself, "Do I want to hear what this person has to say? Do I want to hear this story?" In this case, the answer should have been "No."
It was a good book! Beautiful, engaging, riveting at points, with a nice--if predictable--flow. If you want to hear a white colonizer talk about how hard it is to be a white colonizer, then this is by all means the book for you. If you, on the other hand, don't feel inclined to hear about how unfortunate it is that all those indigenous people had to be slaughtered, perhaps this one is best avoided.
This might even serve as a framework for answering the increasingly relevant question of how to separate the artist from their work in other areas. Is R. Kelly's music good? Is Louis C.K.'s comedy good? Are Woody Allen's movie's good? Of course they are. Well, some of them. It's not a question of whether the work in question is good. It's a question of whether I want to give that person my time, attention, and space in my brain.
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