Female authors dominate this year’s Man Booker prize shortlist. Works by Anna Burns, Esi Edugyan, Daisy Johnson, and Rachel Kushner cover subjects ranging from an 11-year-old escaping slavery on a sugar plantation to an unflinching look at prison life for poor women in America.
Johnson, 27, has become the youngest author to ever make the shortlist, beating by a few months the record from Eleanor Catton, who was also 27, in 2013. Catton went on to win the prize. Richard Powers and Robin Robertson complete the list with their novels The Overstory and The Long Take, respectively.
“All of our six finalists are miracles of stylistic invention,” chair of the judges, Kwame Anthony Appiah, said. “In each of them the language takes centre stage. And yet in every other respect they are remarkably diverse, exploring a multitude of subjects ranging across space and time.
“From Ireland to California, in Barbados and the Arctic, they inhabit worlds that not everyone will have been to, but which we can all be enriched by getting to know. Each one explores the anatomy of pain – among the incarcerated and on a slave plantation, in a society fractured by sectarian violence, and even in the natural world. But there are also, in each of them, moments of hope.”
Writers of all nationalities are eligible for the prize, the criteria being that their work is in English and published in the UK and Ireland. This year’s shortlist is made up of three authors from the UK, two from the US, and one from Canada.
Edugyan is the only author this year to have been previously shortlisted – for Half-Blood Blues in 2011. This year she won over the judges with Washington Black, which tells the story of a bright young man who breaks free from the chains of slavery but struggles to make a name for himself in a world that’s set against him.
Johnson’s Everything Under details the struggles of a young woman who was abandoned by her mother at the age of 16. Kushner’s book The Mars Rooms is the gritty tale of a former lap-dancer serving two life sentences in an women’s jail in the US, while Burns’s Milkman is set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Powers’ The Overstory has been described by the judges as ”the eco-epic of the year” and looks at nine strangers who are brought together to save the last few acres of virgin forest standing in North America. The Long Take, by Robertson, concerns a D-Day veteran living with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Each author who made the shortlist will receive £2,500 and a specially bound version of their book. The eventual winner, who will take home £50,000, will be announced on the 16 October in London’s Guildhall.
The 2018 Man Booker Prize shortlist in full
Author (nationality) – 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)
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