Conspiracy theorists like to think that prize long-and shortlists are compiled with an eye to various external factors: are there enough women? What about a decent ethnic spread? How many nationalities? How many genres? Of course, judging panels do no such thing. They judge the books on their merits and then see what they have got – sometimes it leads to balanced lists and sometimes to interestingly shaped ones. The Man Booker dozen, the longlist of 13 for this year’s prize, is one of the latter.
The 13 chosen books are:
Paul Beatty (US) The Sellout (Oneworld)
J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) The Schooldays of Jesus (Harvill Secker)
A.L. Kennedy (UK) Serious Sweet (Jonathan Cape)
Deborah Levy (UK) Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ian McGuire (UK) The North Water (Scribner UK)
David Means (UK) Hystopia (Faber & Faber)
Wyl Menmuir (UK) The Many (Salt)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
Virginia Reeves (US) Work Like Any Other (Scribner UK)
Elizabeth Strout (US) My Name Is Lucy Barton (Viking)
David Szalay (Canada-UK) All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
It is a list of which six and a half are from UK writers, four American, one and a half Canadian and one South-African-Australian. Surprisingly there is no room for anything from India, a regular Man Booker stronghold, and nothing from Ireland either. Six women are on the list and four debut novelists (Hystopia by David Means; The Many by Wyl Menmuir; Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves). Full Story