NZ Author makes Man Booker Prize Longlist - youngest author

Man Booker Prize for Fiction:

2013 longlist announced

www.themanbookerprize.com

 

The longlist, or ‘Man Booker Dozen’, of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is announced today, Tuesday 23 July 2013.

This year’s longlist of 13 books was selected by a panel of five judges chaired by academic, critic and writer Robert Macfarlane. The longlist has been selected from 151 titles, of which 14 were called in by the judging panel.

The 2013 longlist is:

 Author                                  Title (Publisher)

Tash Aw                                 Five Star Billionaire (Fourth Estate)

NoViolet Bulawayo             We Need New Names (Chatto & Windus)

Eleanor Catton                     The Luminaries (Granta)

Jim Crace                              Harvest (Picador)

Eve Harris                             The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (Sandstone Press)

Richard House                     The Kills (Picador)

Jhumpa Lahiri                     The Lowland            (Bloomsbury)

Alison MacLeod                   Unexploded (            Hamish Hamilton)

Colum McCann                    TransAtlantic (Bloomsbury)

Charlotte Mendelson          Almost English (Mantle)

Ruth Ozeki                            A Tale for the Time Being (Canongate)

Donal Ryan                           The Spinning Heart (Doubleday Ireland)

Colm Tóibín                         The Testament of Mary (Viking)

Robert Macfarlane, Chair of judges, comments:

‘This is surely the most diverse longlist in Man Booker history: wonderfully various in terms of geography, form, length and subject.  These 13 outstanding novels range from the traditional to the experimental, from the first century AD to the present day, from 100 pages to 1,000 and from Shanghai to Hendon.’

 Represented on the 2013 longlist are authors from Britain, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Ireland.

 Of the 13, two of the authors have appeared on the shortlist before: Jim Crace was shortlisted for the Booker in 1997 for Quarantine (Viking), while Colm Tóibín has been shortlisted twice: for The Blackwater Lightship in 1999 and in 2004 with The Master.

Seven of the 13 authors are women; three are debut authors. Jim Crace is the oldest author on the longlist at 67 and Eleanor Catton is the youngest aged 27.

 Three independent publishers make the longlist. Sandstone Press, a small publisher based in Highland Scotland, joins Granta and Canongate. Sandstone made the longlist for the first time in 2011, with Jane Rogers’ The Testament of Jessie Lamb. 

 

The judges will meet again in September to decide the shortlist of six books, which will be announced on Tuesday 10 September at a press conference at the Man Group’s head office. The winner of the 2013 prize will be announced at a winner’s ceremony on Tuesday 15 October from London’s Guildhall, an event broadcast by the  BBC on BBC News 24 and the 1o o’clock News on BBC One.

 

The six shortlisted writers are each awarded £2,500 and presented with a specially commissioned, beautifully hand-bound edition of their book. The winner will receive a further £50,000.

 Robert Macfarlane, who was previously a member of the judging panel in 2004, is joined on the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction judging panel by: the renowned broadcaster Martha Kearney; critic, academic and prize-winning biographer, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst; broadcaster, classicist and critic, Natalie Haynes and Stuart Kelly, essayist and former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday.

 
The Man Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969 and 2013 marks its 45^th year. Hilary Mantel made history in 2012 when she won the prize for the second time with Bring up the Bodies, as the first woman and the first British author to win the prize twice. She has since gone on to become the first Man Booker author to enter the official UK Top 50 number one spot with the mass-market edition of Bring Up the Bodies.

A full history of the prize, including an interactive timeline and weekly news round-ups, can be found on the Man Booker Prize website – www.themanbookerprize.com.

‘Most Diverse’ Man Booker Longlist Released

The Daily Beast

 

The committee for the Man Booker Prize, the prestigious British literary award that has been criticized in the past for elitism, is touting “the most diverse longlist” in the prize's history. Seven of the 13 longlisted authors are women, and seven different countries are represented on the list. Eleanor Catton, 27, is the youngest author on the list, with her 832-page novel, The Luminaries. Only two of the nominees—Colm Tóibín and Jim Crace—have been shortlisted before. The winner of the 2013 prize will be announced on October 15.

The longlist:
Tash Aw, Five Star Billionaire
NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
Jim Crace, Harvest
Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
Richard House, The Kills
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Alison MacLeod, Unexploded
Colum McCann, TransAtlantic
Charlotte Mendelson, Almost English
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart 
Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

Read it at BBC

July 23, 2013