Abridged English novel winning Oscar is rot (10)
I believe the answer is:
biodegrade
'is rot' is the definition.
'abridged english novel winning oscar' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'english' could be 'e' (abbreviation) and 'e' is present in the answer.
'oscar' could be 'o' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.) and 'o' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'abridged' is 'bidgrade' which is within the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
(Another definition for biodegrade that I've seen is " Rot!".)