The longlist for this year's Man Booker prize was announced yesterday. It's a 13-book list, about which I will write at greater length at Global Comment in the next few days. The titles are:
Bill Clegg (US) - Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape)
Anne Enright (Ireland) - The Green Road (Jonathan Cape)
Marlon James (Jamaica) - A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications)
Laila Lalami (US) - The Moor's Account (Periscope, Garnet Publishing)
Tom McCarthy (UK) - Satin Island (Jonathan Cape)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) - The Fishermen (ONE, Pushkin Press)
Andrew O’Hagan (UK) - The Illuminations (Faber & Faber)
Marilynne Robinson (US) - Lila (Virago)
Anuradha Roy (India) - Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Sunjeev Sahota (UK) - The Year of the Runaways (Picador)
Anna Smaill (New Zealand) - The Chimes (Sceptre)
Anne Tyler (US) - A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus)
Hanya Yanagihara (US) - A Little Life (Picador)
I'm going to try to read as many as possible, and review them, before the 15 September shortlist announcement. I've already read Anne Tyler's book (review next week, but small spoiler - it's lovely). That leaves a round dozen to be getting on with, so it's a fair challenge!
As usual, I've divided the task in half, with the First Six being the books I would probably want to read anyway (so I'll start with them) and the Back Six being the ones with less immediate appeal that I might not get to. My First Six are:
Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings
Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen
Anuradha Roy's Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways
Marilyne Robinson's Lila
Tom McCarthy's Satin Island
The first four of these have been ordered from a bookshop using a handy voucher I had ready, so should arrive early next week. I'm kicking off, therefore, with Lila, which I have bought on Kindle and is therefore ready to start immediately.
As usual, my reviews will be divided between here and Global Comment, but I'll always link out to them wherever they are.
So with that ... let the games begin!
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