"[...] a tour d'horizon of contemporary fiction"

"When Robert Macfarlane, the chair of this year's Man Booker Prize judges, announced the longlist he called it the most diverse in recent memory. He was right, and the same is still true of the shortlist he and his peers have just selected. The 151 novels they started with represented a tour d'horizon of contemporary fiction, a grand vista that encompassed everything from the epic to the miniaturist. The longlist distilled the numbers but kept the flavour and now the shortlist has intensified it further."

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta)
The Harvest by Jim Crace (Picador)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (Penguin)

— The Man Booker Prizes
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"Two writers with Canadian credentials – B.C.-based writer Ruth Ozeki and London, Ont.-born Eleanor Catton – are among the six finalists for the prestigious Booker prize for fiction.
     A Tale for the Time Being by Ozeki, who is American born but now lives in Whaletown, B.C., and The Luminaries by Catton, who lives in New Zealand, are on the shortlist announced Tuesday for the £50,000 ($81,000) prize.
     The winner of the prize – open only to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth – will be announced Oct. 15."
— The Globe and Mail
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