Salman Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 and both Atwood and Obioma had earlier made it to the 1986 and 2015 short-lists respectively.
LONDON – Salman Rushdie’s latest book ‘Quichotte’ has been short-listed for the 2019 edition of the Man Booker Prize. Rushdie who had won the 1981 Booker Prize for ‘Midnight’s Children’, has been shortlisted alongside Margaret Atwood and four other writers, as announced by the committee on Tuesday.
Margaret Atwood, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1986, has been shortlisted again for ‘The Testaments’, which is a sequel to her 1986 Booker Prize shortlisted work, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’.
Lucy Ellmann, Bernardine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma and Elif Shafak are the other writers whose books are in the short-list. Chigozie Obioma was also shortlisted earlier for the 2015 edition of the Man Booker for his debut novel ‘The Fishermen’.
Announcing the shortlist, chair of judges Peter Florence, said: “Like all great literature, these books teem with life, with a profound and celebratory humanity. The common thread is our admiration for the extraordinary ambition of each of these books. There is an abundance of humour, of political and cultural engagement, of stylistic daring and astonishing beauty of language.”
“Anyone who reads all six of these books would be enriched and delighted, would be awe-struck by the power of story, and encouraged by what literature can do to set our imaginations free,” he added.
The 2019 winner will be announced on October 14 at an awards ceremony at London’s Guildhall and will be broadcasted live on BBC. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book, while the winner will receive a further £50,000.
Here is the 2019 shortlist (by nationality and publisher):
Margaret Atwood (Canada), The Testaments (Chatto & Windus)
Lucy Ellmann (UK/USA), Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
Bernardine Evaristo (UK), Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)
Salman Rushdie (UK/India), Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)
Elif Shafak (Turkey/UK), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)
