LONDON, July 24 — Golden Booker winner Michael Ondaatje is among the 13 authors to make the Man Booker Prize longlist with his new novel Warlight, joined by Rachel Kushner’s prison-life novel The Mars Room and the first-ever graphic novel to make the list, Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina.
Announced today, the longlist, also known as the “Man Booker Dozen,” actually consists of 13 books in all, selected by a panel of five judges and chosen from 171 submissions — the highest number of titles entered into the competition in the 50-year history of the prize.
Those books were all written in English and published (or are to be published) in the UK and Ireland between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018.
Ondaatje’s spot on the longlist comes less than a month after his novel The English Patient won a public poll of the favourite Man Booker winner of the last 50 years.
As for the inclusion of a graphic novel this year, the judges said, “Given the changing shape of fiction, it was only a matter of time before a graphic novel was included on the Man Booker longlist. Sabrina makes demands on the reader in precisely the way all good fiction does. ...Drnaso uses images to express an idea about what’s invisible — an idea about uncertainty, and the different kinds of holes that missing people leave in our lives.”
The 2018 Man Booker longlist follows:
Belinda Bauer (UK) - Snap
Anna Burns (UK) - Milkman
Nick Drnaso (US) - “Sabrina”
Esi Edugyan (Canada) - Washington Black
Guy Gunaratne (UK) - In Our Mad and Furious City
Daisy Johnson (UK) - Everything Under
Rachel Kushner (US) - The Mars Room
Sophie Mackintosh (UK) - The Water Cure
Michael Ondaatje (Canada) - Warlight
Richard Powers (US) - The Overstory
Robin Robertson (UK) - The Long Take
Sally Rooney (Ireland) - Normal People
Donal Ryan (Ireland) - From A Low and Quiet Sea
A shortlist will be announced on September 20, followed by the winner announcement on October 16. The winner received £50,000 (RM266,573). — AFP-Relaxnews
