THE JUDGES OF this year’s Man Booker Prize have whittled down the longlist of this year’s coveted prize.

After assessing 151 entries, a total of 13 novels have been selected for a longlist that represents both established and first-time authors across seven different countries.

Ireland boasts three authors on this year’s longlist – Colm Tóibín, Colum McCann and Donal Ryan.

Eight of the 13 novelists included are female.

Just two authors have previously appeared on a Man Booker shortlist: Jim Crace with Quarantine (1997) and Tóibín with The Blackwater Lightship (1999) and The Master (2004).

This year’s judging panel was chaired by Robert MacFarlane and included Martha Kearney, Stuart Kelly, Natalie Haynes and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.

Commenting on the longlist, MacFarlane said the works chosen “range from the traditional to the experimental, from the first century AD to the present day, from 100 pages to 1,000 and from Shanghai to Hendon”.

The longlist:

Tash Aw – Five Star Billionaire (Fourth Estate)

NoViolet Bulawayo – We Need New Names (Chatto & Windus)

Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries (Granta)

Jim Crace – Harvest (Picador)

Eve Harris – The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (Sandstone Press)

Richard House – The Kills (Picador)

Jhumpa Lahiri – The Lowland (Bloomsbury)

Alison MacLeod – Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton)

Colum McCann – TransAtlantic (Bloomsbury)

Charlotte Mendelson – Almost English (Mantle)

Ruth Ozeki – A Tale for the Time Being (Canongate)

Donal Ryan – The Spinning Heart (Doubleday Ireland)

Colm Tóibín – The Testament of Mary (Viking)

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