WASHINGTON BLACK, a novel by Esi Edugyan, published by Knopf and Random House Audio, and
THE LONG TAKE by Robin Robertson, which Knopf will publish in January in the U.S., have been selected by the judges as two of six semi-finalists for the 2018 Man Booker Prize.
Among the most coveted international prizes awarded annually for literary fiction, the nominees were chosen from titles published in the UK between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018.
The winner will be announced the evening of Tuesday, October 16.
Congratulations to all our longlisted and shortlisted authors and their publishers.
Click
here for the complete list of Man Booker Finalists.
George Saunders, famed short story writer, has won the Man Booker Prize for his first full-length novel,
Lincoln in the Bardo.
From The Man Booker Prize website:
The 58-year-old New York resident, born in Texas, is the second American author to win the prize in its 49-year history. He was in contention for the prize with two British, one British-Pakistani and two American writers.
Lola, Baroness Young, 2017 Chair of judges, comments:
‘The form and style of this utterly original novel, reveals a witty, intelligent, and deeply moving narrative. This tale of the haunting and haunted souls in the afterlife of Abraham Lincoln’s young son paradoxically creates a vivid and lively evocation of the characters that populate this other world. Lincoln in the Bardo is both rooted in, and plays with history, and explores the meaning and experience of empathy.’
Lincoln
in the Bardo focuses on a single night in the life of Abraham Lincoln: an actual moment in 1862 when the body of his 11-year-old son was laid to rest in a Washington cemetery. Strangely and brilliantly, Saunders activates this graveyard with the spirits of its dead. The Independent described the novel as ‘completely beguiling’, praising Saunders for concocting a ‘narrative like no other: a magical, mystery tour of the bardo – the “intermediate” or transitional state between one’s death and one’s next birth, according to Tibetan Buddhism.’ Meanwhile, the Guardian wrote that, ‘the short story master’s first novel is a tale of great formal daring…[it] stands head and shoulders above most contemporary fiction, showing a writer who is expanding his universe outwards, and who clearly has many more pleasures to offer his readers.’
-Read the rest here.
Browse below for Saunders’ rightfully beloved works:
The Man Booker Prize is one of the most influential annual English-language international literary fiction honors. Congratulations to these eight books published by Penguin Random House for making the longlist! The longlist includes 13 total titles published in the UK between October 1, 2016 and September 30, 2017.
Learn more about our eight books in the running:
A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James is the recipient of the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Set in Kingston, Jamaica, where the author was born, the book is a fictional history of the attempted murder of Bob Marley in 1976.
Awarded annually, the Man Booker Prize is open to fiction writers of any nationality writing in English, and published in the U.K. It was won last year by Richard Flanagan for
The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Cheers for Marlon James!
