Man Booker Prize 2013 shortlist announced
The shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize has been announced
with Jim Crace already being touted as the “marginal favourite” to take
the top literary prize.
He is shortlisted for Harvest, a novel about the fragile social
eco-system of a remote English village, which the author has claimed
will be his last.
Crace, who has been shortlisted once before for Quarantine in 1997,
is joined on the by NoViolet Bulawayo for We Need New Names, a novel
centred on a group of children in Zimbabwe with unusual names: Darling,
Chipo, Bastard, Bornfree, Forgiveness and Messenger.
Irish writer Colm Toibin is another established name on the list
(having previously been shortlisted twice), nominated for The Testament
of Mary, a short novel about a mother whose son is brutally killed. At
just 104 pages it would be the briefest Booker winner yet if it were to
take the prize.
The youngest on the shortlist, Eleanor Catton, 27, won her place for
second novel The Luminaries, which is out later this month. The novel
starts in 1866 New Zealand and is a tale of ghosts, murder, smuggling
and conspiracy set against a backdrop of the gold rush.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland is also
on the list. The Indian American author, , a member of President Barack
Obama's President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, provides a
glimpse of the suburban streets of Calcutta through the eyes of Subhash,
divided from his rebel Naxalite brother Udayan.
Japanese-American Ruth Ozeki, a practising Zen Buddhist priest,
completest the shortlist of six with her novel A Tale for the Time Being
- a novel of unconventional narrative form about a woman who discovers,
and is profoundly influenced by reading, a Hello Kitty diary washed
ashore.
“There's a pleasing diversity to the shortlist: they’re six very
different books, in terms of both settings and writing styles... But
while each of the shortlist offers something memorably unique, I think
the judges’ debate will ultimately be between Jim Crace and Eleanor
Catton,” remarks Jonathan Ruppin, web editor for Foyles.
“ Harvest, with its fragile lyricism, is the crowning achievement of
Crace's consistently outstanding career, while Catton is pushing the
boundaries of what fiction can achieve, bringing the vagaries of
astrology and the intricacies of the Golden Ratio into the very fabric
of how she put The Luminaries together. I've not read anything, Man
Booker nominated or not, that comes close to either this year.
“Either book would be a thoroughly deserving winner, but Crace is
probably the marginal favourite, if only because it's easier to imagine
five people concurring about Harvest than The Luminaries.” Chair of the
Booker judges, Robert Macfarlane, remarked on the shortlist's “global
range” which he said “shows the English language novel to be a form of
world literature”.
Macfarlane told this morning's press conference: “We looked for books
that sought to extend the power and possibility of the form. This is in
keeping with the history of the novel. We wanted novel novels.”
He described the judging process as “more UN than Dodge City” adding:
“Our tools were evidence, advocacy and debate.”
A spokesman for booksellers Waterstones said: “With a multicultural
shortlist dominated by women I think the bookies may be wrong this time.
“It's five years since the last ‘surprise’ winner - The White Tiger -
and I think this shortlist gives the judges a lot of options.The
Bookseller's fiction previewer Cathy Rentzenbrink commented that it was
a “very exciting” shortlist. She said: “Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries
and Jim Crace's Harvest seem to be very clearly fancied, and considered
particularly exceptional. I'd also say that Nao, a character who
features in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, is the most
compelling character I've come across all year.”
The six shortlisted authors will receive £2,500 and be presented with
a hard-bound edition of their book.
The Booker Prize winner, announced in mid October, will receive
£50,000.
Last year's winner was Hilary Mantel for Bring Up the Bodies. She
became only the third author, after Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee, to win
the prize twice.
Man Booker Prize 2013 shortlist in full:
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Harvest by Jim Crace
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
- The Independent
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