The shortlist for the Booker Prize has been revealed, with six novels in contention for the British literary award given annually to “the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland.”
Kiran Desai made the shortlist for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, her long-awaited third novel, about two young people who reconnect after their grandparents tried to make a match between them. Desai won the Booker Prize in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss.
Andrew Miller was named a finalist for The Land in Winter, which won this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Miller was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 for Oxygen. David Szalay, who was a finalist for the 2016 award for All That Man Is, made this year’s shortlist with Flesh.
Susan Choi was shortlisted for Flashlight, a nominee for this year’s National Book Award, alongside Katie Kitamura for Audition and Ben Markovits for The Rest of Our Lives.
The judges for this year’s prize are authors Roddy Doyle, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Chris Power, Kiley Reid, and actor Sarah Jessica Parker.
The Booker Prize was established in 1969. Previous winners include Nadine Gordimer for The Conservationist, Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things, and Douglas Stuart for Shuggie Bain.
The winner of this year’s prize will be announced at a ceremony in London on November 10.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
