The China Mail - Longlist for Booker literary prize spans the ages

The list of 13 novels will be whittled down to a shortlist on September 6, before the prestigious British award is conferred on October 17, handing its winner a career-changing boost in sales and public profile.

The award ceremony in London coincides with the 88th birthday of Alan Garner, who made his name with children's fantasy titles and folk retellings.

After six decades in print, the Englishman earns his first Booker nod this year for "Treacle Walker". Meanwhile at the age of 20, US author Leila Mottley has been longlisted for "Nightcrawling".

Mottley is one of three debut novelists on the list, alongside Britain's Maddie Mortimer ("Maps of our Spectacular Bodies") and American writer Selby Wynn Schwartz ("After Sappho").

At 116 pages, Irish author Claire Keegan's "Small Things Like These" is the shortest novel recognised in the Booker prize's 53-year history.

NoViolet Bulawayo, Karen Joy Fowler and Graeme Macrae Burnet are previously shortlisted authors who made the grade this year.

But some notable names were absent, including Jennifer Egan, Ian McEwan and Hanya Yanagihara, with the judges leaning particularly towards smaller, independent publishers.

"The list that we have selected offers story, fable and parable, fantasy, mystery, meditation and thriller," the Booker panel's chair, British cultural historian Neil MacGregor, said in a statement.

He said the longlist -- drawn from an initial total of 169 novels submitted by publishers -- includes discussion of contemporary themes such as the Covid pandemic and questions of racial and gender injustice.

Another latter-day concern revolving around "post-truth" politics often crops up.

"The extent to which we can trust the word, spoken or written, is in many of these books the real subject under examination," MacGregor said.

African authors have been ascendant in English-language fiction, scooping the Nobel, Booker and Goncourt prizes last year.

If the trend continues, that could favour "Glory" by Zimbabwe's Bulawayo on the Booker list for 2022, which features eight women and five men.

Shehan Karunatilaka from Sri Lanka is the only other longlisted author not from the British Isles or United States, for "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida".

The Booker is Britain's foremost literary award for novels written in English. Its previous recipients include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.

I.Ko--ThChM