The judges of the Man Booker Prize announced today their first wave of selections for the 2009 award, given to honor a novel by a citizen of the British Commonwealth, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The longlist, which will be winnowed to six finalists announced on September 8, includes three debut novelists, two former winners, and a handful of authors previously nominated for the honor. The recipient of this year's fifty-thousand-pound prize will be announced on October 6 in London.
The longlisted authors are:
A. S. Byatt for The Children's Book (Chatto and Windus)
Winner in 1990 for Possession (Chatto and Windus)
J. M. Coetzee for Summertime (Harvill Secker)
Winner in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K (Secker & Warburg) and in 1999 for Disgrace (Secker & Warburg); previously longlisted for Elizabeth Costello (Secker & Warburg, 2003) and Slow Man (Secker & Warburg, 2005)
Adam Foulds for The Quickening Maze (Jonathan Cape)
Sarah Hall for How to Paint a Dead Man (Faber and Faber)
Previously shortlisted for The Electric Michelangelo (Faber and Faber, 2004)
Samantha Harvey for her debut The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape)
James Lever for his debut Me Cheeta (Fourth Estate)
Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)
Previously longlisted for Beyond Black (Fourth Estate, 2005)
Simon Mawer for The Glass Room (Little, Brown)
Ed O'Loughlin for his debut Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Penguin)
James Scudamore for Heliopolis (Harvill Secker)
Colm Toibin for Brooklyn (Viking)
Previously shortlisted for The Master (Picador, 2004) and The Blackwater Lightship (Picador, 1999)
William Trevor for Love and Summer (Viking)
Previously shortlisted for The Story of Lucy Gault (Viking, 2002), Reading Turgenev (from Two Lives) (Viking, 1991), The Children of Dynmouth (Bodley Head, 1976), and Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel (Bodley Head, 1970)
Sarah Waters for The Little Stranger (Virago)
Previously shortlisted for The Night Watch (Virago, 2006) and Fingersmith (Virago, 2002)
The "Man Booker Dozen" was selected from a pool of 132 entries by judges Lucasta Miller, John Mullan, James Naughtie, Sue Perkins, and Michael Prodger.
Debut novelist Aravind Adiga won the 2008 prize for The White Tiger (Atlantic), which is being translated into thirty-nine languages and whose U.K. edition has sold more than a half-million copies. Other winners of the forty-year-old prize have gone on to tour the world and see their novels climb the bestseller lists. Who do you think should take this year’s influential honor–an established master, a midcareer author, or an emerging voice?