The Man Booker Prize is in its second year within its new identity as an international award, after having opened itself up last year to literature from all countries beyond the UK & Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe.Today, the prize’s excitingly borderless shortlist was revealed, narrowed down — after what chair of judges Michael Wood called “terrific arguments… violent but friendly” — from the 13 books on the long-list.
“The writers on the shortlist present an extraordinary range of approaches to fiction. They come from very different cultures and are themselves at very different stages of their careers,” said Wood.
The official candidates — selected by judges Ellah Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith, Frances Osborne and Wood — include Hanya Yanagihara (for A Little Life, the longest candidate, following the lives of four friends in New York, and hailed by The Atlantic as the potential “Great Gay Novel”), Tom McCarthy (for Satin Island, which sees him shortlisted for the second time), Marlon James (for A Brief History of Seven Killings, a cross-decade, transcontinental saga following the assassins who invaded Bob Marley’s home and injured him and his wife before he was set to play a free, peace-promoting concert organized by the Jamaican Prime Minister in 1976), Chigozie Obioma (for The Fishermen, about four brothers who meet a strange man who foresees the eldest being killed by one of his younger siblings), Sunjeev Sahota (for The Year of the Runaways, about 13 men from India who’re living under one roof in Sheffield), and Anne Tyler (for A Spool of Blue Thread, which tells the story of a tight-knit family).
The winner — who’ll receive £50,000 or approximately $75,000 — will be announced on October 13 at a ceremony in London.
[Via The Bookseller]