Unknowns Rule the Booker Shortlist

by Andrew Rosenheim, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 9/15/2006

An eclectic and largely unknown six novels constitute this year’s shortlist for the U.K.’s most celebrated literary award, the Man Booker Prize. The prize is open to any novel by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland, and the shortlisted authors reflect this geographical diversity – with two Australians, one Indian, an exiled Libyan, and two Britons making up the six. Unusually, four of the writers selected are women, of whom only Sarah Waters is well known. Edward St Aubyn and Hisham Matar are the two male writers shortlisted.

None of the well-known writers from the long-list of 19 authors announced in August made the cut. Casualties include the bookies’ former favorite David Mitchell (whose last novel Cloud Atlas just lost out to Booker-winning Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty in 2004), two-time winner Peter Carey, Andrew O’Hagan, former winner Nadime Gordimer, and Claire Messud.

Among British publishers, Penguin and the independent Canongate each has two authors on the list, while Picador (Macmillan) and Virago have one. Remarkably, Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Bloomsbury are all unrepresented in the shortlist: Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (Virago), Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men (Viking); Kate Grenville, The Secret River (Canongate); Kiram Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton); M J Hyland, Carry Me Down(Canongate); Edward St Aubyn, Mother’s Milk (Picador).

The Booker winner will be announced on October 10. Bookmaker William Hill puts The Night Watch as the favorite to take the award.