Source : Hindustan Times
This was another year when no Indian writer figured in the long list for the £50,000 prize.
Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lanka-born Canadian writer who won the 1992 Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, is in the running for this year’s award, with his book Warlight named on the long list.
The list of 13 books was selected by a panel of five judges — Kwame Anthony Appiah, Val McDermid, Leo Robson, Jacqueline Rose, and Leanne Shapton. They were chosen from 171 submissions published in the UK and Ireland between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018.
This was another year when no Indian writer figured in the long list for the £50,000 prize.
Appiah said: “Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the times, there were many dystopian fictions on our bookshelf – and many novels we found inspirational as well as disturbing. Some of those we have chosen for this long-list feel urgent and topical, others might have been admired and enjoyed in any year.
“All of these books – which take in slavery, ecology, missing persons, inner-city violence, young love, prisons, trauma, race – capture something about a world on the brink. Among their many remarkable qualities is a willingness to take risks with form.”
The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 20 and the winner on October 16.
Ondaatje, 74, recently won the one-off Golden Man Booker Prize for the best work of fiction from the last five decades for The English Patient. His latest book is set in 1945 London, describing the impact of war on children.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize is considered a leading prize for literary fiction written in English. The list of former winners features many of the literary giants of the last four decades, including Iris Murdoch, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel.
The long list:
Belinda Bauer (UK)- Snap (Bantam Press)
Anna Burns (UK)- Milkman (Faber & Faber)
Nick Drnaso (USA)- Sabrina (Granta Books)
Esi Edugyan (Canada)- Washington Black (Serpent’s Tail)
Guy Gunaratne (UK)- In Our Mad And Furious City (Tinder Press)
Daisy Johnson (UK)- Everything Under (Jonathan Cape)
Rachel Kushner (USA)- The Mars Room (Jonathan Cape)
Sophie Mackintosh (UK)- The Water Cure (Hamish Hamilton)
Michael Ondaatje (Canada)- Warlight (Jonathan Cape)
Richard Powers (USA)- The Overstory (Willian Heinemann)
Robin Robertson (UK)- The Long Take (Picador)
Sally Rooney (Ireland)- Normal People (Faber & Faber)
Donal Ryan (Ireland)- From A Low And Quiet Sea (Doubleday Ireland)
