Man Booker Shortlist Unveiled

"Orwell’s second best-selling novel behind 1984
was rejected four times before going on to sell
20 million copies." — Flavorwire

"Novelists who struggled long and hard just to get their books into the shops after a string of rejections by big publishers have joined the more established literary names of Hilary Mantel and Will Self on a Man Booker shortlist which this year celebrates 'the power and depth of prose.' The six books in contention for the £50,000 prize came from what the chair of judges, Peter Stothard, called 'an exhilarating year for fiction – the strongest, I would say, for more than a decade.'"
— Mark Brown and Alison Flood, The Guardian
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"The six books were chosen by a panel of judges chaired by Sir Peter Stothard, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. The shortlisted books were selected from the longlist of 12 announced in July.
     The shortlist is: [...]
     Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books); Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber); Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate); Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt); Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury); Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber).
     Peter Stothard, Chair of judges, comments: 'After re-reading an extraordinary longlist of twelve, it was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose – and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas.'”
— The Man Booker Prizes
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Buy all of the Man Booker nominees here...