Oyinkan Braithwaite, Bernardine Evaristo, and Chigozie Obioma are on the Booker Prize 2019 longlist announced on July 23, 2019.
The Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom. The prize which was first awarded in 1969 has been won by three Africans, Nadine Gordimer (1974), Ben Okri (1991), and J. M. Coetzee (1999). Those who have been shortlisted are Marie NDiaye (2013) and Chigozie Obioma (2016).
This year the prize is being judged by a panel of five judges: founder and director of Hay Festival Peter Florence (Chair); former fiction publisher and editor Liz Calder; novelist, essayist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo; writer, broadcaster and former barrister Afua Hirsch; and concert pianist, conductor and composer Joanna MacGregor.
The 2019 longlist, or ‘Booker Dozen’, of 13 novels chosen from 151 novels published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019 is:
- Margaret Atwood (Canada), The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
- Kevin Barry (Ireland), Night Boat to Tangier (Canongate Books)
- Oyinkan Braithwaite (UK/Nigeria), My Sister, The Serial Killer (Atlantic Books)
- Lucy Ellmann (USA/UK), Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
- Bernardine Evaristo (UK), Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
- John Lanchester (UK), The Wall (Faber & Faber)
- Deborah Levy (UK), The Man Who Saw Everything (Hamish Hamilton)
- Valeria Luiselli (Mexico/Italy), Lost Children Archive (4th Estate)
- Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)
- Max Porter (UK), Lanny (Faber & Faber)
- Salman Rushdie (UK/India), Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)
- Elif Shafak (UK/Turkey), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)
- Jeanette Winterson (UK), Frankissstein (Jonathan Cape)
Chair of the 2019 judges, Peter Florence, said of the list, “If you only read one book this year, make a leap. Read all 13 of these. There are Nobel candidates and debutants on this list. There are no favourites; they are all credible winners. They imagine our world, familiar from news cycle disaster and grievance, with wild humour, deep insight and a keen humanity. These writers offer joy and hope. They celebrate the rich complexity of English as a global language. They are exacting, enlightening and entertaining. Really – read all of them.”
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, September 3 at a morning press conference. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The 2019 winner will be announced on Monday 14 October at an awards ceremony at London, UK. They will receive a £50,000 prize. And global recognition since it’s a big deal winning this award.
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