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Atwood and Rushdie won the prize in 2000 and 1981 respectively
Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among the many six authors shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.
Atwood is in contention again with The Testaments, her eagerly awaited notice-as much as The Handmaid’s Story, whereas Sir Salman makes the decrease with Quichotte.
Bernardine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma, Elif Shafak and US author Lucy Ellmann are furthermore up for the prize.
Each and every Atwood and Rushdie personal won the coveted prize sooner than, in 2000 and 1981 respectively.
Atwood furthermore made the shortlist with The Handmaid’s Story in 1986.
The Testaments, which is determined 15 years after the close of that novel, will be formally published subsequent week.
The winner, whittled down from 151 submissions and a longlist of 13, will be launched on 14 October.
The 2019 shortlist used to be launched on Tuesday at a press conference on the British Library in London.
“Bask in any powerful literature, these books teem with existence, with a profound and celebratory humanity,” talked about Peter Florence, chair of this year’s judges.
Belfast-born author Anna Burns won closing year’s prize alongside with her coming-of-age epic Milkman.
This year’s shortlist
Margaret Atwood – The Testaments
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Liam Spicy/Chatto & Windus
Pickle 15 years after the enigmatic finest scene of The Handmaid’s Story, Atwood’s powerful-anticipated notice-up is narrated by three female characters.
The original used to be difficulty in a totalitarian negate called Gilead the set up females are subjugated and enslaved by an oppressive patriarchal society.
The Handmaid’s Story used to be tailored for a movie starring Natasha Richardson in 1990. Extra honest no longer too lengthy ago, it fashioned the idea for an Emmy-winning TV series starring Elisabeth Moss.
Canadian author Atwood, 79, won the 2000 Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin. She used to be furthermore shortlisted for the prize in 1986, 1989, 1996 and 2003.
The Testaments will be published staunch after uninteresting evening on 10 September. Later that day, Atwood will talk relating to the book at a Nationwide Theatre match that will be confirmed in cinemas around the area.
Florence, one in every of the few to personal read the book, describes it as “a savage and fine novel that speaks to us on the present time with conviction and vitality”.
Lucy Ellmann – Geese, Newburyport
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Galley Beggar Press
Born in Illinois in 1956 and now primarily primarily primarily based in Edinburgh, Ellmann is the ideal US author on this year’s shortlist.
Her novel, which runs to a whopping 998 pages, is a circulate-of-consciousness monologue that is primarily made up of 1 staunch sentence.
Its narrator is an Ohio housewife who reflects on her previous, her household and her nation whereas latticing cherry pies.
Rob Joanna MacGregor describes the book as “a genre-defying novel, a torrent on contemporary existence [and] a hymn to loss and be troubled”.
Ellmann’s inclusion on the shortlist comes 5 years on from the controversial dedication to make US authors eligible.
Paul Beatty radically change the first US recipient of the prize in 2016 alongside with his racial satire The Sellout.
If Geese, Newburyport furthermore goes on to win, this might likely likely maybe likely furthermore be the longest winning novel since 2013 winner The Luminaries.
Bookmaker Ladbrokes has made it 2/1 favourite to win this year’s prize.
Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Girl, Diversified
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Born in London in 1959, Anglo-Nigerian author Evaristo has made the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time alongside with her eighth book.
Described as a “fusion fiction” novel, Girl, Girl, Diversified follows the lives of 12 characters, most of whom are sad, British and female.
Rob Xiaolu Guo called it “a vital, fierce novel… about contemporary Britain and womanhood” that “deserves to be read aloud”.
Evaristo herself has talked about she targets to “explore the hidden narratives of the African diaspora” and “subvert expectations and assumptions”.
Chigozie Obioma – An Orchestra of Minorities
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Born in Nigeria in 1986 and now primarily primarily primarily based within the US, Chigozie Obioma is the author of two novels which personal both been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
His debut novel The Fishermen beforehand made the decrease in 2015. It went on to encourage a 2018 stage adaptation that transfers to the West Pause this week.
An Orchestra of Minorities tells the epic of a younger Nigerian chicken farmer whose admire for a girl drives him to radically change an African migrant in Europe.
Told within the mythic form of the Igbo literary custom, it is miles described by protect Afua Hirsch as “a book that wrenches the coronary heart”.
Salman Rushdie – Quichotte
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Sir Salman is never any stranger to the Booker Prize. He won the award in 1981 with Hour of darkness’s Kids and made the shortlist again in 1983, 1988 and 1995.
Hour of darkness’s Kids went on to be judged the “Booker of Bookers” in 1993 and “Simplest of the Booker” in 2008.
Impressed by Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Quichotte tells of an aging travelling salesman who drives all the intention in which by The United States to picture himself mighty of a TV star’s hand.
Printed closing month, the radical – Rushdie’s 12th – “pushes the boundaries of fiction and satire”, in accordance with jury chair Florence.
Born in India in 1947 and now primarily primarily primarily based in Contemporary York, Rushdie is right known for his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which sparked frequent protests by Muslims and a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
Elif Shafak – 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Distinctive World
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British-Turkish novelist Shafak used to be born in France in 1971 and has published 17 books, 11 of that are novels.
Pickle in Istanbul, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Distinctive World is made up of the recollections of a intercourse worker who has been left for uninteresting in a rubbish bin.
Rob Liz Calder – a author and editor whose former colleagues contain Sir Salman Rushdie – called the book “a work of heroic creativeness”.
Organisers personal insisted the Booker Prize is free from nepotism and favouritism after concerns were raised over Calder’s judging feature.
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Booker Prize
‘A gigantic-ranging and heroic line-up’
by Rebecca Jones, BBC arts correspondent
After years of mounting criticism that the Booker Prize had radically change too mighty and dominated by American novelists, this shortlist is a welcome riposte.
First there are two literary heavyweights with Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie. Each and every ride extreme and industrial success and personal won the prize sooner than.
There is finest one American, Lucy Ellmann, who moved to England as a teen and now lives in Scotland. Yet it is miles price noting that a series of the books this year sort out the negate of The United States.
After four years when the shortlist featured no writers from Africa, the Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma makes the decrease for the second time.
Elif Shafak, who used to be born in Turkey, is shortlisted for a novel written in what is her second language.
Bernardine Evaristo completes a gigantic-ranging and heroic line-up with a novel suggested in free verse. Appreciate no longer be set up off – it be pleasing.
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