Booker Shortlist

The Man Booker shortlist was announced today. This is the first year that authors from the U.S. qualify. Far from dominating the shortlist, as some had feared, only two made the transition, Joshua Ferris and Karen Fowler.

Three are British (Howard Jacobson, Ali Smith, and Calcutta-born Neel Mukherjee) and one is Australian (Richard Flanagan).

The list is male-dominated, with only two women, Ali Smith and Karen Fowler (hello, Bailey’s Women’s Prize For Fiction, there is still a need for you).

 Shortlist

To Rise Again 9780385352857_702c0 We Are All Completely 9780553419559

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris (Hachette/Little,Brown, 5/13/14)

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan (RH/Knopf. 8/12/14)

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Penguin/Putnam/Marian Wood; 5/30/13; also in trade pbk)

J, Howard Jacobson, (RH/Crown/Hogarth, 10/14/14, moved up from 3/10/15)

The Lives of Others, Neel Mukherjee (Norton; 9780393247909; recently acquired to be released, 10/1/14)

How to be Both, Ali Smith (RH/Pantheon; 12/2/14)

One of the big surprises is that David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, called by Ursula K Le Guin, “600 pages of metafictional shenanigans in relentlessly brilliant prose” and leading odds in U.K betting, did not move to the short list.

Longlist Only

 

9781476747231_f75ed   The Wake  9781400065677_611e9

9780062365583_e119e  9780393240825  9781620406472_4cf58
The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt (S&S; 3/11/14; Thorndike)

The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound) — published via the crowd-funded site Unbound; available as an ebook on Axis 360

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (Random House, 9/2/14; Recorded Books)

Us, David Nicholls (Harper, 10/8/14; HarperAudio)

The Dog, Joseph O’Neill (RH/)Pantheon, 10/9/14; RH Audio)

Orfeo, Richard Powers (Norton, 1/20/14; Thorndike; Recorded Books)

History of the Rain, Niall Williams (Macmillan/Bloomsbury, 5/6/14)

One Response to “Booker Shortlist”

  1. Wendy Bartlett Says:

    Cannot believe Mitchell got shafted when the Ferris book was so bad and the Fowler book so mediocre. I think in their rush to get non-UK writers on there, Mitchell took a hit. Not cool. Not that I’m passionate about Bone Clocks or anything.