2018 Man Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist for the 2018 Man Booker Prize has been announced, with none of the usual suspects – and for the first time ever it includes a graphic novel (Sabrina by Nick Drnaso). The full list is:

Snap by Belinda Bauer (UK) (Bantam Press)
Milkman by Anna Burns (UK) (Faber & Faber)
Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (USA) (Granta Books)
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Canada) (Serpent’s Tail)
In Our Mad And Furious City by Guy Gunaratne (UK) (Tinder Press)
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (UK) (Jonathan Cape)
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (USA) (Jonathan Cape)
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh (UK) (Hamish Hamilton)
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Canada) (Jonathan Cape)
The Overstory by Richard Powers (USA) (William Heinemann)
The Long Take by Robin Robertson (UK) (Picador)
Normal People by Sally Rooney (Ireland) (Faber & Faber)
From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan (Ireland) (Doubleday Ireland)

“Every one of these books is wildly distinctive” according to the chair of this year’s jury – the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. The other judges are the crime writer Val McDermid, graphic novelist Leanne Shapton and critics Leo Robson and Jacqueline Rose. They read 171 books – the most ever submitted. The shortlist will be revealed on September 20th, with the £50,000 prize winner revealed on October 16th at London’s Guildhall.

“All of these books – which take in slavery, ecology, missing persons, inner-city violence, young love, prisons, trauma, race – capture something about a world on the brink,” Appiah said. In other words it’s a depressing dystopian list which, following on from the decision of the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction to withhold that prize because none of the novels made them all laugh, begs the question: is literary humour dead?

The bookies’ favourite will surely be Michael Ondaatje, the only previous winner of the prize on the list, having shared the 1992 Booker prize with Barry Unsworth. “For a short time,” he said, “I was a legend in my own lunchtime“. Ondaatje also won the public vote to choose the ‘Golden’ Man Booker Prize earlier this month. The English Patient had been Kamila Shamsie’s choice from the 1990s winners. The other shortlisted titles were: In a Free State by V.S Naipaul (chosen by Robert McCrum from he first decade of the prize); Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (chosen by Lemn Sissay from the 1980s); Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (chosen by Simon Mayo from the 2000s); and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (chosen by Hollie McNish from this decade).

Also since I last got around to blogging, the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk (along with translator Jennifer Croft) won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for Flights, and the judges for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize have been announced.

As always there are many excellent novels that didn’t make the longlist. I am most disappointed by the omission of Travelling In A Strange Land by David Park a beautiful, touching novel which, if you haven’t already read it, should be on your Christmas list. Unless this miserable burning world ends before then.