The shortlist for The Booker Prize, the U.K.'s top prize for fiction, has been announced. Two former winners, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, both made the cut—a week before Atwood's book, The Testaments, has even been published.
The full shortlist, with each title's U.K. publisher listed, is as follows:
- Margaret Atwood (Canada), The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
- Lucy Ellmann (U.S./U.K.), Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
- Bernardine Evaristo (U.K.), Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
- Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)
- Salman Rushdie (U.K./India) Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)
- Elif Shafak (U.K./Turkey) 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)
The six nominees were selected from 151 submissions. Peter Florence, chair of the Bookser judges, says of the selections: “The common thread is our admiration for the extraordinary ambition of each of these books. There is an abundance of humor, of political and cultural engagement, of stylistic daring and astonishing beauty of language."
The winner of this year's Booker Prize will be named on October 14. This year's award is the first following the Man Group's decision to cease funding the prize.
