The six novels shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction have been announced. The shortlisted novels are:
Commenting on the shortlist, Michael Wood, the chairman of the judging panel said ‘Only on rare occasions does celebration come so closely aligned with regret. The regret of what we left out was tempered by the enormous excitement we have in presenting the six books on the shortlist. We re-read all 13 books on the longlist and in the process we rediscovered new pleasures in each. The writers on the shortlist present an extraordinary range of approaches to fiction. They come from very different cultures and are themselves at very different stages of their careers.’
Big names culled from the longlist include Anne Enright and Marilynne Robinson. Interesting to note as well that while the longlist had a majority of women authors, just two made it through to the shortlist.
The shortlist will, though, put at ease those who feared a US domination over the prize. The breakdown is two authors from the UK, two from the US, and one from Jamaica and Nigeria apiece.
The Bookie’s favourite appears to still be Hanya Yanagihara’s a little life