It's a long way to go for a literary lunch

Once, organisers of book events lured their star guests with the promise of a free meal and a bottle of claret. How things have changed, writes Tracey MacLeod (from her hotel suite in Mauritius)

It can be a bit of an ordeal for authors, being nominated for a literary prize. The nervous wait by the phone; the grim ceremony spent small-talking with people who haven't read your book; the forced graciousness when the award inevitably goes to someone else.

Last week in Mauritius, a new style of book prize was born. The three British authors who were short-listed for Le Prince Maurice Award got to spend an all-expenses-paid week with their families in one of the world's most elegant five-star resorts, a tropical paradise complete with white sand, azure ocean and seven different types of facial.

In a move that brings a new meaning to cultural tourism, the hotel Le Prince Maurice has inaugurated its own book prize, honouring literary love stories. Each year it will alternate between French and English-language novels, to reflect the island's colonial history. This year it was the turn of the Brits, in the incredulously grateful form of Anne Donovan, Charlotte Mendelson and Dan Rhodes, all of whom, when they first heard about the prize, assumed it was some kind of elaborate hoax.

While acknowledging that the prize could be seen as "the biggest freebie of all time", the jury president, novelist Tim Lott, was determined to establish its credentials by assembling the strongest possible jury. The six British judges included the novelists Romesh Gunesekera, Jonathan Coe, Nikki Gemmell and John O'Farrell, and the award-winning biographer Miranda Carter. The fact that they, too, got to spend a week with their families at Le Prince Maurice doubtless made recruitment a little easier. The jury was completed by three Mauritian judges, and the award's patron, broadcaster Clive Anderson. As one of the short-listed authors observed, "I've never been involved with a prize with quite so many judges..."

Le Prince Maurice is one of several luxury resorts on Mauritius, a former spice island in the Indian Ocean. The prize offers the hotel a chance to distinguish itself as a place where the mind, as well as the body, can be pampered. It's fair to say, though, that last week it wasn't too hard to pick out the British writers from the hotel's buffed and moneyed regular clients. The writers were the ones with the library tans and dazed "I can't believe my luck" expressions, attempting to order beer from the juice-bar in the spa.

They gathered in packs around the vast infinity pool, gossiping. One of them carried a small, well-thumbed volume of Tristram Shandy. Not one of them visited the equipment-packed gym, with its squash court and personal Body Doctor. All very different from last year, apparently, when the inaugural prize was awarded to a French-language book, and the French judges spent the entire week sulking about the relative size of their rooms, with one of them refusing to board his plane before it had been confirmed that he would be given the biggest suite in the hotel.

The British judges may have been "a little less political", in the tactful words of the hotel's general manager Andrew Milton, but they were no less passionate when it came to discussing the relative merits of the short-listed books at last Friday's judging session. Each judge nominated one novel, published in 2003, to form a long list, which was then whittled down to the final three at an initial session in London.

Lott was determined to widen the scope of the award beyond conventional romantic fiction to include books "which have love at their spine" - which is how they ended up with a short list of Anne Donovan's Buddha Da, about the spiritual quest of a Glaswegian painter-decorator; Daughters of Jerusalem by Charlotte Mendelson, featuring lesbian love in shabby-genteel Oxford; and Dan Rhodes's Timoleon Vieta Come Home, about the love between an ageing gay composer, his dog and a brutal Bosnian interloper. "I think the organisers might have been hoping for something more like Rebecca," said one judge. Still, according to Lott, the hotel management remained admirably hands-off.

Donovan was particularly pleased that a novel set in working-class Glasgow and written in Glaswegian dialect should have brought her and her family to a palm-fringed Indian Ocean beach. "I've never been out of Europe before. I didn't know anything about Mauritius, I had to look it up. I just knew it was somewhere very glamorous."

For Rhodes, whose best junket before this had been a two-week reading tour of Flanders, the Mauritius holiday was like a surreal school-trip, with the judges as teachers and Anderson as the benign headmaster. His book is set in Tuscany, but lacking the funds to research it there, he relied on his sister's 1988 copy of Let's Go Italy. So to find himself in a £500-a-night suite with ocean views was something of a culture shock. "I punched the air in glee when I found out I'd been nominated."

The best thing about the prize, according to all the short-listed authors - besides the whole luxury resort business, of course - was the chance to meet each other and spend time with other writers. "It's so unlike the normal life of a writer," said Mendelson. "Normally the best thing that can happen to them is to win an award, but that can also be a lonely and scary experience. But coming somewhere this glamorous and meeting other writers is a prize in itself."

The actual prize, in fact, is a two-week "writer's retreat" at the hotel, a prospect that became more and more alluring as the week went on. "I'm almost tempted to try and write a novel myself, just to come back," joked Anderson. His literary credentials established through hosting the BBC's Big Read and Before the Booker, he insisted on getting fully involved with the judging process, and, as patron, he got the biggest suite - a beach-side beauty with its own miniature pool. There were no complaints from the other judges, though. "I've got my own in-house plunge pool," said Coe, whose bathroom had sprung a leak.

Recruited by Lott through personal contacts and friends of friends, most of the judges already knew each other, though they had probably never seen each other in swimwear before. O'Farrell, the author of Things Can Only Get Better and The Best A Man Can Get, had worked on TV scripts with Anderson, and suggested him as patron. "This is research for me," said O'Farrell, stretched out on a sun-lounger. "My next project is going to be a response to Hard Work, Polly Toynbee's book about life on the breadline in Britain. I'm going undercover as a member of the international super-rich. I'm calling it Easy Work."

For Lott, the prospect of repeat visits to Le Prince Maurice is a reality. Somehow he has lucked into the position of president for life of the awards. It may have helped that when Le Prince Maurice's Patrice Binet-Décamps came to London to recruit a president for his romantic literature award, Lott had just published a book called The Love Secrets of Don Juan. (Whether Binet-Décamps actually read this dyspeptic anatomy of a failed marriage is unclear.)

Lott has judged book prizes before, but this is the first such occasion where he gets his own suite on stilts over an azure lagoon. For a few weeks, as word spread that he was recruiting judges for this literary mission improbable, he was the most popular man in London. And, as he will be picking a new set of sobbingly grateful judges every two years in the future, that looks set to continue. "No one's ever going to review me badly again," he laughs. "I won't have any more enemies."

Quite how the prize will develop depends on how long the owners of Le Prince Maurice are prepared to support it, although they declare themselves committed in the long term. "In future, we're hoping that publishers will get involved, and put forward nominations," says the hotel's general manager, Andrew Milton.

The actual sum the hotel has invested in the award is unclear, but at the start of Mauritius's off-season, there's no problem accommodating 20 extra guests and a handful of journalists, and Air Mauritius came up with generous discounts. "We don't want to be a showbiz hotel," says Milton. "Our clientele is European, and they tend to be people who are interested in art, books, design. So it makes sense for us to reflect that in what we offer. An international literary prize is a good way of putting our image across in that market."

According to the Harpers and Queen travel editor Catherine Fairweather, the award is part of a new trend to target intelligent travellers. "It's smart to be intelligent these days. Five years ago, Harpers and Queen would never have run a piece about the Hay-on-Wye festival, for example. Now we do. It isn't just to do with the travel industry; it's a general trend among the kind of people that travel to these expensive places. People are getting married later, and travelling alone more, and they want to get something extra from their holidays. Learning holidays and writing holidays have taken off, and by associating themselves with the arts, hotels are obviously hoping to get that kind of crowd."

In the books world, too, exotic locations seem to be taking off. It's a general rule that the further away from London a literary event takes place, the more keenly it will be attended. That was certainly true of last year's Pirati Literary Festival, organised in Brazil by the publisher Liz Calder. With awards and events proliferating, and judges generally poorly remunerated, if at all, authors need that little something extra to attract them. Preferably with business-class flights thrown in...

Even though the participants were happy to be in Mauritius at all, an element of competition between the authors inevitably crept in as the night of the prize ceremony approached. Last Saturday's awards dinner, supervised by the chef Anton Mosimann, who had flown in from London, was preceded by a slightly surreal reception, attended by various Nehru-suited and sari-ed Mauritian dignitaries, including the Vice President of the Republic and the British High Commissioner.

It's fair to say that Anderson's speech divided the audience. "It's great to be in this beautiful hotel," he began, "stayed in by millionaires. Or at least, they are until they use their mini-bars." On one side of the room, the British contingent rocked with laughter; on the other, the hotel owners smiled bravely. Nor did Lott's anecdote about being sick over his own shoes just before his first meeting with the award's elegant French founder play as well as it might.

The prize went to Anne Donovan, whose Buddha Da was deemed by the judges to be "suffused with the spirit of love". Despite the book's use of Glaswegian dialect, the Mauritian judges, from an island where the most widely spoken language is Creole patois, were charmed.

Already nominated for the Orange prize and Whitbread first novel award, but so far never a winner, Donovan was thrilled. "It's fantastic that a book which is very specific to a certain culture has wider resonance. Most people have concentrated on the Buddhism and the spiritual aspect, so I was really pleased that it has been recognised as a love story." Donovan is already looking forward to returning to the island for her two-week "writer's retreat" and may even incorporate the experience into her fiction.

The runners-up, sun-kissed and spa-coddled, didn't seem too distraught. "Obviously I'd like to have won. But as consolation prizes go, this isn't too bad," said Rhodes.

For all the writers, the week was a bonding experience in a profession where it's easy to get isolated. In fact, Donovan and Rhodes are due to meet again in a couple of weeks. "We're doing a reading together at a festival in Aberdeen," Donovan said. "I think we're booked into a Travelodge..."