The Man Booker Prize has announced its shortlists for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The winner will be named on October 17 at a ceremony at London’s Guildhall. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC.
The shortlisted authors and their works are:
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (Henry Holt)
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (Atlantic Monthly)
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead)
Elmet by Fiona Mozley (JM Originals)
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Random House)
Autumn by Ali Smith (Pantheon)
This is the fourth year that the prize has been open to writers of any nationality, as opposed to only those who are native to the U.K. and the Commonwealth. This year's shortlist is made up of two British, one British-Pakistani, and three American writers.
Two female debut novelists—Emily Fridlund and Fiona Mozley, the youngest authors from the longlist—made the cut alongside previously shortlisted authors Mohsin Hamid and Ali Smith. For Smith, this is her fourth time on the shortlist.
The names were announced by 2017 chair of judges, Baroness Lola Young, at a press conference at the offices of Man Group, the prize sponsor.
"With six unique and intrepid books that collectively push against the borders of convention, this year’s shortlist both acknowledges established authors and introduces new voices to the literary stage," said Young (a former professor at Middlesex University and a member of the House of Lords) in a statement. "Playful, sincere, unsettling, fierce: here is a group of novels grown from tradition but also radical and contemporary. The emotional, cultural, political and intellectual range of these books is remarkable, and the ways in which they challenge our thinking is a testament to the power of literature."
