Booker longlist: 8 female authors make the cut

Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Valerie Luiselli are among the authors to appear on this year’s Booker Prize longlist. 

Eight of the longlisted authors for this year’s prize are women, including Atwood, Luiselli, Deborah Elvie and Lucy Ellmann. The list was chosen from 151 novels published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019, by a panel of five judges. “If you only read one book this year, make a leap,” said Peter Florence, chair of the 2019 judges. “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.” Gaby Wood, literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, added: “Watching the 2019 Booker Prize judges arrive at this wonderful list has been an invigorating experience. Firstly because they deemed the calibre of the submissions to be extremely high overall. Secondly because they reached far and wide in their search for the best fiction of the year, calling in (among others) Young Adult novels and books that are sometimes dismissed as ‘commercial’.

The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 3. 

The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will be announced on October 14.

— The Independent