2015 Man Booker Prize: the shortlist is up

Yesterday the shortlist of 6 finalists for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for fiction were announced. There is one debut novelist in Chigozie Obioma, but other than that the list is made up of known quantities. Here are some thoughts.

Marlon James has made it to the shortlist for the first time, continuing a prolific hit rate after John Crow's Body was a finalist for the LA Times Book prize and his The Book of Night Women also became a finalist in the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award.

Hailing from the British Isles Sunjeev Sahota's latest book is nominated. This after his debut novel Ours Are The Streets made one of the biggest literary splashes in 2013, with The Observer deeming it "nothing short of extraordinary."

It's good to see Anne Tyler (she of The Accidental Tourist fame) get the nod. That book won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1985, and she's been nominated for several Pulitzers.

I was surprised not to see Anuradha Roy make it beyond the longlist, based on the strength of her past work I thought she'd be a dead cert'. The Folded Earth won The Economist Crossword Prize for fiction and An Atlas of Impossible Longing was named one of 60 essential books on modern India by World Literature Day.

All these works and more are 15% off in our Literature & Fiction sale, during September, using the code LITFIC at checkout.

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