Here they are: the thirteen semi-finalists for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
- Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
- Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
- Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
- Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
- Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
- Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
- Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
- Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
- Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
- A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
- Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
- Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
- D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)
It's an interesting mix of established and emerging authors here. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize in 2004, while his 1994 book, The Folding Star, made the shortlist. Sebastian Barry and Julian Barnes have written multiple novels that have been shortlisted. Carol Birch wrote Turn Again Home, which made the longlist in 2003. Meanwhile, four of this year's longlisters are debut novelists: Stephen Kelman, A.D. Miller, Yvvette Edwards and Patrick McGuinness. It's nice to see that nine of the titles on the list come to us from independent publishers. Three of the publishers -- Oneworld, Sandstone Press and Seren Books -- are new to the Booker Prize. The novels by Stephen Kelman, Patrick deWitt, and Alison Pick are published on this side of the world by House of Anansi, of which I am a fan. Three of the semi-finalist authors are Canadians; surprisingly, only three Canadians have won the prize before -- Michael Ondaatje (1992, The English Patient), Margaret Atwood (2000, The Blind Assassin), and Yann Martel (2002, Life of Pi). None of the longlisters are African or South Asian.
While I suspect that Julian Barnes has the strongest chances for winning the pot, the titles I'd most like to read are Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie, which Ron Charles calls "a moving, fantastically exciting sea tale," and Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers, which Carolyn Kellogg describes as "smooth and seamless, shot through with dark humor, pared and antique without being Baroque."
The shortlist of six authors will be announced on September 6. The winning title will be announced on Tuesday October 18; its author will receive £50,000. Each of the shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a specially-designed edition of their book. Last year’s winner was The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.
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