It’s that time of year again, dear readers, when the good judges of the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for fiction, and my personal favorite award, as well, put out their longlist (a baker’s dozen) for this years’ prize! Because this prize is awarded based on British publication dates, some of the books haven’t been released in the US–but consider them a preview of the great books still to come!
We’ll break down some of the highlights below, but here is the list, as announced yesterday morning:
Author (nationality) – Title
Paul Beatty (US) – The Sellout
J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) – The Schooldays of Jesus (Will be released in US on February 21, 2017)
A.L. Kennedy (UK) – Serious Sweet (Will be released in US on October 18, 2016)
Deborah Levy (UK) – Hot Milk
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) – His Bloody Project
Ian McGuire (UK) – The North Water
David Means (US) – Hystopia
Wyl Menmuir (UK) –The Many (No official US release at this date)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) – Eileen
Virginia Reeves (US) – Work Like Any Other
Elizabeth Strout (US) – My Name Is Lucy Barton
David Szalay (Canada-UK) – All That Man Is (Will be released in US on October 4, 2016)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) – Do Not Say We Have Nothing (No official US release date at this time)
There are some familiar faces here on this list. J.M. Coetzee (The Schooldays of Jesus) was the first author to win the Man Booker Prize twice (for Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace). Deborah Levy has been shortlisted before for her novel Swimming Home, and A.L. Kennedy has actually been a judge for the prize before (in 1996). In addition, OneWorld, which published Paul Beatty’s The Sellout also published last year’s winner–Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings. OneWorld was the first small publisher to have a book win the Man Booker Prize, and there are a fair number of books on this year’s list that are from small presses, too.
There are also a number of surprises here, as well. His Bloody Project is, broadly speaking, a crime thriller/murder mystery, which is not a genre often seen on any Man Booker Lists. It’s currently being given odds of 6/1 to win–which is second-best only to Coetzee, at 3/1. In a pleasant turn of events, six of the authors nominated to the longlist are women, and the geographic range of the authors is pretty impressive, as well, with five American writers (this is the third year in which American authors have been permitted to compete) six British, one Canadian and one South African–and Massachusetts can boast a Booker longlist nominee: Ottessa Moshfegh was born in Boston, and set her novel Eileen in the Boston area, as well!
As you might remember, the Man Booker Prize is an enormously important award; it carries an enormous amount of significance in the publishing world, having been accepted as a landmark award in fiction since its establishment in 1969, and traditionally boosts sales of the selected books, particularly the winner, considerably. Often, the longlist is made up of books that have passed under most readers’ radars, finding that which is good, and great, not just popular. Additionally, the award itself comes with a pretty hefty cash prize…£50,000, which is currently about $86,000.
If you’re interested, the full rules for submissions can be found here.
There will be much more to say about diversity and representation and literary awards, and lots of reading to be done before the shortlist is announced on September 13, and the winner is announced on October 25. Until then, however, the chair of the 2016 judges, Amanda Foreman, made the following statement regarding the longlist, and how each book brings something revelatory to literature, and to the art of the novel:
‘This is a very exciting year. The range of books is broad and the quality extremely high. Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be…From the historical to the contemporary, the satirical to the polemical, the novels in this list come from both established writers and new voices. The writing is uniformly fresh, energetic and important. It is a longlist to be relished.’
Until tomorrow, dear readers–here’s to a summer of fantastic, and award-winning fiction!