During the press conference, the chair judges on Thursday announced the six authors shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize for fiction.
The Shortlist includes Anna Burns, Esi Edugyan, Daisy Johnson, Rachel Kushner, Richard Powers and Robin Robertson.
Among the nominees, the 27-year-old British novelist Daisy Johnson has become the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, with her novel Everything Under, about a troubled mother-daughter relationship that reimagines Greek myth in modern Britain.
While appreciating the work of selected authors, Kwame Anthony Appiah, at a press conference at the offices of Man Group remarked their novels “a miracle of stylistic invention” in which the language takes centre stage.
“All of our six finalists are miracles of stylistic invention. In each of them the language takes centre stage. And yet in every other respect they are remarkably diverse, exploring a multitude of subjects ranging across space and time. From Ireland to California, in Barbados and the Arctic, they inhabit worlds that not everyone will have been to, but which we can all be enriched by getting to know,” Appiah said.
The shortlist, which features four women and two men, covers a wide range of subjects, from an 11 year-old slave escaping a Barbados sugar plantation, to a D-Day veteran living with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Man Booker Prize is open to writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the UK and Ireland.
This year’s shortlist features three writers from the UK, two from the US, and one from Canada.
Two novels from independent publishers are shortlisted, alongside three from Penguin Random House and one from Pan Macmillan imprint Picador.
The 2018 winner will be announced on October 16 in London’s Guildhall.
List of selected novels:
- Milkman by Anna Burns (UK)
- Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Canada)
- Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (UK)
- The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (USA)
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (USA)
