The Man Booker Prize 2013

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Longlist 2013 announced (23 July 2013) :

Five Star Billionaire, Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)

We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton (Granta)

Harvest, Jim Crace (Picador)

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris (Sandstone Press)

The Kills, Richard House (Picador)

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)

Unexploded, Alison MacLeod ( Hamish Hamilton)

TransAtlantic, Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)

Almost English, Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle)

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)

The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland)

The Testament of Mary, Colm Tóibín (Viking)

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize-2013

[Tim the Wiz]

My guess at the shortlist:

We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo

Harvest, Jim Crace

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri

TransAtlantic, Colum McCann

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

The Testament of Mary, Colm Tóibín

Crace and Toibin maybe not "global" enough; Lahiri, Bulawayo and Ozeki too American. Colum McCann has written the perfect novel for a "diversity" statement which doesn't range too far from mainstream British sensibility: adroit at the sentence-level, geographic proximity with a link to America, and the chance to rubber-stamp what is guaranteed to be a best-seller (which I don't begrudge him, given the excellence of Let the Great World Spin).

Winner: TransAtlantic?

[Schlimazl]

Isn't Lahiri form US?How is she eligible?

[Zar Lannister]

Has anyone read the Man Booker candidates for this year? Obviously they're in the list for some sort of critic reason, but I was mostly hoping to hear some thoughts on the selection?

One of my favorite books is a Man Booker winner (Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger)

[Dragonstar]

Has anyone read the Man Booker candidates for this year? Obviously they're in the list for some sort of critic reason, but I was mostly hoping to hear some thoughts on the selection?

One of my favorite books is a Man Booker winner (Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger)

Was just going to say, this is a sign of how poorly I've been keeping up with what's new. Haven't read any on this list. I (not resentfully) blame this forum.

[mysig]

i'll echo zar lannister. do any of these happen to tackle post-colonialism or the internet?

[Castellan]

Ruth Ozeki wrote My Year of Meats which I liked. I read the bumf for this one and it does indeed refer to internet. The premise sounds a bit twee but typical of what's around now, I guess it depends how its done. (A woman finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox on the beach with a Japanese teenaged girls diary inside - from Tsunami? She reads about the girl's teen life which includes stuff about the internet.)

[Brendan Moody]

Lahiri was born in London and presumably retains British citizenship, which makes her eligible even though she's lived in the U.S. since age two. As it happens, I've just finished an ARC of The Lowland. It's an impressive book in many respects, not flashily stylish or ambitious but thoughtful and quietly realistic. It's not, to be frank, something I would think of as Booker-worthy, but it's not a shocking selection either.

I also read TransAtlantic a few months ago, and wasn't especially impressed. Some parts of it are wonderful, but others fall entirely flat, and the points McCann is trying to make about history and continuity don't really come across. Not a bad book, but uneven, and rather too conventional.

I may read Five Star Billionaire and We Need New Names in the near future, and will offer my ill-informed commentary in this thread if I do.

[mysig]

cheers, castellan! will attempt to pick it up then. it does sound a wee bit twee but as ye said thats entirely in keeping with the sensibilities of contemporary for-profit literature

edit: eleanor catton's the luminaries sounds pretty interesting as well. might be that i am buying into the hype surrounding the writer herself but the blurb made me think of tipping the velvet (by the brilliant sarah waters)

http://drupal.themanbookerprize.com/books/luminaries

[Ormond]

Lahiri was born in London and presumably retains British citizenship, which makes her eligible even though she's lived in the U.S. since age two.

And Ruth Ozeki was born in the USA to an American father and Japanese mother and evidently just has dual Canadian and USA citizenship because she married a Canadian, and lives half the time in New York, and they also consider her eligible.

[Procrastimancer]

Has anyone read the Man Booker candidates for this year? Obviously they're in the list for some sort of critic reason, but I was mostly hoping to hear some thoughts on the selection?

One of my favorite books is a Man Booker winner (Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger)

Not yet, but soon. I have the novels by Ozeki and Bulawayo waiting to be read and I'll probably focus on them next. A few of these books aren't even out yet, are they?

[Brendan Moody]

I finished We Need New Names today. There's an inherent power in the material, and Bulawayo is a more than competent stylist, especially in varying the narrator's voice as she evolves, but I don't see anything that makes the book particularly worthy of an award shortlist. Of the three titles I've read from the shortlist so far, I'd give the edge to the Lahiri.

[Myshkin]

Well the shortlist was announced today:

We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

The Harvest - Jim Crace

The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin

[Larry.]

I like this shortlist (have read all but the Lahiri and Catton so far). Tough to choose between the ones that I have read, as each is very different in style, content, and characterizations, but almost all of them resonated with me on some level.

[Myshkin]

I like this shortlist (have read all but the Lahiri and Catton so far). Tough to choose between the ones that I have read, as each is very different in style, content, and characterizations, but almost all of them resonated with me on some level.

I haven't read any of them yet, but this shortlist just doesn't excite me like last year's did.

[Brendan Moody]

As of next year the Booker will be considering works by Americans.

[banjax451]

As of next year the Booker will be considering works by Americans.

I said my peace on this in the Nobel thread, but if true...this is outstanding news. An anachronism that has little place in the modern world. I'd never even considered the quite good argument about how many people who can win the prize who live/work in America, or have dual passports.

[Ormond]

I said my peace on this in the Nobel thread, but if true...this is outstanding news. An anachronism that has little place in the modern world. I'd never even considered the quite good argument about how many people who can win the prize who live/work in America, or have dual passports.

I find it interesting that they mention Jhumpa Lahiri at the end but not Ruth Ozeki. I think Ozeki is even more American than Lahiri. She was born in the USA, seems to have spend most of her life here, still has a home in New York as well as one in British Columbia, and seems to be a "Commonwealth" author only because she married a Canadian and because of that Canada considers her a dual US-Canadian citizen.

Librarians in the USA seem to consider both Lahiri and Ozeki as being American writers, because the Library of Congress call numbers for their books start with "PS", instead of "PR" as would be the case for British and other Commonwealth authors.

[Schlimazl]

From an outsider perspective the award that will encompass the whole of English language literature is far better, there are already awards for Russian, Spanish and Portuguese languages that disregard citizenship, not sure about German Booker, but the point is language is much better and interesting marker than citizenship.

Anyway the award will be announced shortly, ladbrokes had Crace and Catton as the heavy favorites.

[Myshkin]

I actually agree with what Crace said in the linked article upthread:

“In principle, I should believe in all prizes being open to everyone. But I think prizes need to have their own characters, and sometimes those characters are defined by their limitations.”

Opening it to Americans kind of robs the Booker of its character.