Man Booker Prize reveals 2014 shortlist

Having unveiled its 13-strong longlist in July, the Man Booker Prize today revealed the six books that survived the cut and made this year’s shortlist for one of the literary world’s most prestigious awards. They are: Joshua Ferris’ To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Howard Jacobson’s J, Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others and Ali Smith’s How to be Both. This is the first year of the prize in which the Americans Ferris and Fowler have been eligible to be nominated, being the first in which the prize has opened up its field of potential nominees to any book written in English and published in the UK.

A.C. Grayling, head of the judging panel, says of the judges’ choices:

We are delighted to announce our international shortlist. As the Man Booker Prize expands its borders, these six exceptional books take the reader on journeys around the world, between the UK, New York, Thailand, Italy, Calcutta and times past, present and future.

We had a lengthy and intensive debate to whittle the list down to these six.  It is a strong, thought-provoking shortlist which we believe demonstrates the wonderful depth and range of contemporary fiction in English.

Howard Jacobson is the only nominee to have won the Booker previously, for The Finkler Question in 2010. Ali Smith has been nominated twice previously, for 2001’s Hotel World and 2005’s The Accidental. This list represents the first nomination for each of the remaining four authors. Alongside the two Americans, the shortlist is comprised of three British authors (Smith, Jacobson, Mukherjee) and the Australian Flanagan. The inclusion of Smith and Fowler means that two thirds of women longlisted for this year’s prize made the shortlist. The judges reveal their winner in a little over a month, on Tuesday 14 October.

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