The much anticipated shortlist for the Booker Prize was announced the morning of Tuesday 3 September. The Booker is usually considered the leading prize for works of literary fiction written in the English language. It first began in 1969 to celebrate novels published by those in the British Commonwealth; however, in 2013 the rules were reconsidered, it was then decided the prize would consider all English language novels published across the world provided they were widely accessible. All shortlisted authors receive £2,500 and a “specially bound edition of their book”. A nomination for the Booker earns writers instant international recognition and boosts their book sales exponentially. Past Irish writers shortlisted for the Booker include Elizabeth Bowen, William Trevor and Colm Tóibín.
The 2019 Booker Prize Shortlist consists of:
Chigozie Obioma, for his novel An Orchestra of Minorities. This is Obioma’s second published novel and second nomination for the Booker Prize. His debut, The Fishermen, was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize. An Orchestra of Minorities has been called a modern rendition of Homer’s Odyssey. It follows Chinonso, a young farmer in Umuahia, Nigeria, who saves a woman from her own suicide, falls in love with her and travels across the world to understand his place as a man, a lover and a piece in a classist society that is built to keep him small.
Margaret Atwood has been shortlisted for her unpublished sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, entitled The Testaments which is to be released 10 September, 2019. Atwood has been shortlisted four times previously for the prize and won in 2000 for her novel The Blind Assassin. The Testaments follows three perspectives from The Handmaid’s Tale fifteen years after the end of the first novel. In a note to readers Atwood said, “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in”.
Salman Rushdie has been nominated for the Booker Prize for four of his fourteen novels. He won the prize in 1983 for his novel Midnight’s Children which was celebrated again in 1993 as the ‘Booker of Bookers’ by the organisation for its 25th anniversary and for the prize’s 40th anniversary in 2008 it was awarded the title of the ‘Best of the Bookers’. This year he is nominated for his novel Quichotte, the story of a man obsessed with and devoted to the television. The protagonist’s love for the fictional reality transmitted through the television screen takes him across the United States in a car with his imaginary son in the passenger seat.
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-born novelist, essayist, activist and academic. Her nominated novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, is an account of the slow-moving minutes preceding the death of Leila and the memories of her life that bubble up to the surface of her consciousness. Hanif Kureishi, CBE has called Shafak “one of the best writers in the world today”. She has written seventeen books, eleven of which are novels.
Lucy Ellmann’s novel Ducks, Newburyport is the longest of the shortlisted novels, being 998 pages long. The book follows the loves and woes of a wife in Middle-America who worries in a world currently in the midst of environmental collapse and social chaos. The stream of consciousness novel has been lauded as a fabulously brutal take-down of the American value system.
Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other is her eighth published book and has also been shortlisted for the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize. Evaristo is by far the most diverse and experimental of the shortlist. Her work consists of novels written in both verse and prose, occasionally writing with both in a selection of her works. Her novels often tackling ideas of nationalism, traditions of racism, and queer ancestry. Girl, Woman, Other charts the lived experiences of twelve characters, aged 19 to 93, exploring their sexualities, class and cultural backgrounds and their various relationships with the world around them. Elle Magazine has hailed it as “a choral love song to black womanhood”.
The winner of the 2019 Booker Prize will be announced in London’s Guildhall during an evening ceremony held on Monday 14 October.
