Leading prize for fiction in English, Man Booker Prize, Wednesday announced the longlist of 13 books of this year.
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Two formerly shortlisted writers, Tom McCarthy and Andrew O’Hagan, are also longlisted.
Novels by Americans Anne Tyler and Marilynne Robinson are among 13 contenders for the 50,000-pound ($78,000) 2015 Man Booker Prize. Marlon James, who now lives in Minneapolis, is the first Jamaican-born author to be nominated for the prize.
This year’s list includes former victor Irish novelist Anne Enright, nominated this time for The Green Road.
– Bill Clegg, “Did You Ever Have a Family“. The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday, September 15th, and the victor of the prize will be made public in a broadcast by the BBC on October 13th.
First awarded in 1969, the prize’s list of previous winners is a roll call of some of the literary giants of the past four decades, including Salman Rushdie, Iris Murdoch and Ian McEwan.
In Satin Island, McCarthy works on the borders of other disciplines – the philosophy of art, anthropology, psychoanalysis, whatever – and not because he is some one-man avant-garde, as at least one overexcited critic has suggested, but because he’s concerned about our future as much as our past.
Chigozie Obioma (Nigerian), “The Fishermen”.
Chair of the judges Michael Wood, said: “We had a great time choosing this list”.
The Dubliner, who won the Booker in 2007, worked in television for many years before becoming a full-time writer. US author Marilynne Robinson has been shortlisted for Man Booker worldwide Prize twice, in 2011 and 2013.
“There has been talk about how few of us read local fiction – it accounts for only 1 per cent of books sold here”.
Anuradha Roy (India), “Sleeping on Jupiter“.
Mr Clegg, who set up his own agency last year, is working on a second novel “which will take years”, but said working with his writers helped. His novel flits between different generations of one family and locations including a Scottish retirement home and the frontline of the war in Afghanistan.
“A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara (U.S.).
But there are those who think the problem is not American inclusion, but the reappearing of the same names on the Booker Prize list.
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The six shortlisted wri-ters will each be awarded £2,500 and designer-bound edition of their book.
