The 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
‘Man Booker Dozen’ announced

www.themanbookerprize.com


The judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today, Tuesday 27 July, announce the longlist for the prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world.

A total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen’ longlist of 13 books.
 

The longlist includes:

Peter Carey              Parrot and Oliver in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue      Room     (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Helen     Dunmore     The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut          In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson    The Finkler Question     (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy            The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy        C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
David     Mitchell      The Thousand Autumns of Zacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
Lisa Moore              February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray             Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain          Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas      The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner            The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

The chair of judges, Andrew Motion, comments:

“Here are thirteen exceptional novels – books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain.”

Peter Carey (photo left, The Times), is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang.  In 1985 his book Illywhacker was shortlisted for the prize and Theft: A Love Story was longlisted in 2006.

Three authors have been shortlisted before: David Mitchell (twice shortlisted in 2001 for number9dream and in 2004 for Cloud Atlas), Damon Galgut (in 2003 for The Good Doctor) and Rose Tremain (shortlisted in 1989 for Restoration). She was also a judge for the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2000.

Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for his book Kalooki Nights in 2006 and for Who’s Sorry Now? in 2002.

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September at a press conference at Man Group’s London headquarters.  The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC Ten O’Clock News.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will receive £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition.  Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.


For further information about the prize please visit www.themanbookerprize.com