The Man Booker shortlist was announced on Thursday with the coveted fiction award’s possible winners now down to six contenders, four of whom are women.
Anna Burns’ Milkman, Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under, Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, Richard Powers’ The Overstory, and Robin Robertson’s The Long Take are all the running for the roughly $66,000 prize.
As usual, the announcement doesn’t come without a few small controversies, namely the inclusion of genre-defying novel The Long Take by poet Robin Robertson, which mixes verse, prose and photographs to follow the story of a World War II veteran across the United States in the golden era of Hollywood. Despite debate surrounding the book, crime writer Val McDermid has praised its characters, language and the insight it gave into the world. “I’m not sure what else a novel is meant to do,” she said.
Also on the list is 27-year-old British novelist Daisy Johnson, who is now officially the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, with her novel Everything Under, about a troubled mother-daughter relationship that reimagines Greek myth in modern Britain. Johnson beat out some seasoned longlisters including Man Booker veteran Michael Ondaatje and acclaimed Irish novelist Sally Rooney.
Previously only awarded to authors from the U.K. and Commonwealth countries, the Booker prize opened its gates in recent years to writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the British Isles.This year’s shortlist is comprised of three writers from the UK, one from Canada and two from the US, which has people speculating about the possibility of a third consecutive American winner.
The shortlist explores an ‘anatomy of pain’ according to Chair Kwame Anthony Appiah. Indeed, the list deals with a range of contemporary anxieties from racism and sexual assault, through slavery, environmental crisis and incarceration.
‘We live in dark times,’ Appiah said. ‘Or, at least our novelists think we live in dark times.’
The winner will be announced on 16 October at a dinner in London’s Guildhall.
