Will it be a second success for Hilary Mantel with the sequel to previous winner Wolf Hall?

25/07/2012 by Ed Wood - We Love this Book

Three books from Fourth Estate have made it onto the Man Booker Prize for Fiction longlist this year, along with two Faber titles, with Rose Tremain and Zadie Smith notable absentees.

The Yips by Nicola Barker, Bring Up the Bodies by previous winner Hilary Mantel, and Communion Town by Sam Thompson are the Fourth Estate titles on the list, with Narcopolis by Jeet Tahyil and Skios by Michael Frayn from Faber.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon Books), The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt), Umbrella by Will Self (Bloomsbury), and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (And Other Stories) come from indie publishers.

Also on the list is Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre), Philida by Andre Brink (Harvill Secker), and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday). Four of the novels on the list - Thompson's, Joyce's, Moore's and Thayil's Narcopolis are debuts.

Chair of judges Peter Stothard said: "Goodness, madness and bewildering urban change are among the themes of this year’s longlist. In an extraordinary year for fiction the Man Booker Dozen proves the grip that the novel has on our world.

"We did not set out to reject the old guard but, after a year of sustained critical argument by a demanding panel of judges, the new has come powering through.”

The judges this year are academic and literary critic Dinah Birch; historian, writer and broadcaster Amanda Foreman; actor Dan Stevens, and academic, writer and reviewer Bharat Tandon.

The shortlist will be announced on 11 September, with the winner to be revealed at a ceremony at London's Guildhall on 16 October.