Today they announced the longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize.
- Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
- We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
- The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
- Harvest by Jim Crace
- The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris
- The Kills by Richard House
- The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Unexploded by Alison MacLeod
- TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
- Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson
- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
- The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
- The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
Only two of these authors have ever been on the shortlist before, Jim Crace (for Quarantine) and Colm Tóibín (for The Blackwater Lightship and The Master). No former winners are on the list this year.
There are two debut authors: Eve Harris and Donal Ryan.*
Writers come from seven different countries (I have not yet worked out which).
As a reminder to any interested, last year the Man Booker website disabled their forum and I have created a new one. Many of the old users have migrated over, and we’d sure love to get your opinions and insights. Click here to see the forum. There will also be plenty of information available, such as details about each book, but perhaps more importantly up-to-date availability dates (which will change) in the USA and UK. Of course, the most important thing is the discussion. There is a thread to discuss the longlist in general and threads for each book to discuss them in particular.
If you join, please let me know as the activation process is a bit messy and I don’t want to lose you in the ether.
[*In an earlier version of this post I stated that Eleanor Catton was a debut novelist. This was wrong. Now, I got that information from the official press release, so now I wonder if some of the other statistics they offer are incorrect as well.]
I didn’t know Jim Crace was still around and still publishing. I read a couple of his earlier books based on book-blog reviews, loved them, and then didn’t hear anything about him for years afterwards. I’ll have to look up Harvest.
Other than that, I’ll wait for the short list.