SIX AUTHORS HAVE been shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction.
The shortlist was announced this morning by the 2019 chair of judges Peter Florence at a press conference at London’s British Library.
The shortlist was selected from 151 submitted books.
The 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019.
The six shortlisted are:
Commenting on the announcement of the shortlist, Florence said: “The common thread is our admiration for the extraordinary ambition of each of these books.
There is an abundance of humour, political and cultural engagement, of stylistic daring and astonishing beauty of language. Like all great literature, these books teem with life, with a profound and celebratory humanity.
“We have a shortlist of six extraordinary books and we could make a case for each of them as winner, but I want to toast all of them as ‘winners.”
Irish author Kevin Barry had made the longlist for the 2019 awards for his novel Night Boat to Tangier. However, he did not make the shortlist.
Barry was the only Irish author to make the longlist for the prestigious literary award this year, which was picked up by Northern Irish writer Anna Burns last year for her novel Milkman.
Barry (50) is originally from Limerick and currently lives in Sligo. He has won multiple awards for his works of fiction.
Night Boat to Tangier – described by the judges as a “rogue gem of a novel” – is a work of crime fiction that tells the story of two old Irish gangsters who discuss their past as they search for a missing daughter, while waiting for a boat in Tangier.
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