The shortlist for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize was announced yesterday.
Anna Burns, Esi Edugyan, Daisy Johnson, Rachel Kushner, Richard Powers and Robin Robertson are the six authors shortlisted for this year’s prize. They will join other names that have graced the shortlist since the 1968 creation of the award.
Their names were announced yesterday by 2018 Chair of judges, Kwame Anthony Appiah, at a press conference at the offices of Man Group, the prize’s sponsor. He remarked that each of these novels is a miracle of stylistic invention in which the language takes centre stage.
The shortlist features four women and two men, and covers a wide range of subjects, from an 11-year-old slave escaping a Barbados sugar plantation, to a D-Day veteran living with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Man Booker Prize is open to writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the UK and Ireland. This year’s shortlist recognises three writers from the UK, two from the US, and one from Canada.
Two novels from independent publishers, Faber & Faber and Serpent’s Tail, are shortlisted, alongside three from Penguin Random House (two from imprint Jonathan Cape and one from William Heinemann), and one from Pan Macmillan imprint Picador.
The 2018 shortlist of six novels:
Author (country/territory) Title (imprint)
Anna Burns (UK) Milkman (Faber & Faber)
Esi Edugyan (Canada) Washington Black (Serpent’s Tail)
Daisy Johnson (UK) Everything Under (Jonathan Cape)
Rachel Kushner (USA) The Mars Room (Jonathan Cape)
Richard Powers (USA) The Overstory (William Heinemann)
Robin Robertson (UK) The Long Take (Picador)
Click here for more details on the shortlist.