The longlist for the 2020 Booker Prize has been announced.
The 13 books longlisted for the £50,000 (A$90,000) prize are:
- The New Wilderness (Diane Cook, Oneworld)
- This Mournable Body (Tsitsi Dangarembga, Faber)
- Burnt Sugar (Avni Doshi, Hamish Hamilton)
- Who They Was (Gabriel Krauze, Fourth Estate)
- The Mirror and The Light (Hilary Mantel, Fourth Estate)
- Apeirogon (Colum McCann, Bloomsbury)
- The Shadow King (Maaza Mengiste, Canongate)
- Such a Fun Age (Kiley Reid, Bloomsbury)
- Real Life (Brandon Taylor, Daunt Books)
- Redhead by the Side of the Road (Anne Tyler, Chatto & Windus)
- Shuggie Bain (Douglas Stuart, Picador)
- Love and Other Thought Experiments (Sophie Ward, Corsair)
- How Much of These Hills is Gold (C Pam Zhang, Virago).
Two-time Booker winner Hilary Mantel is longlisted for a third time for the final instalment in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, while eight out of the 13 longlisted novels are debuts.
‘That’s an unusually high proportion,’ said Gaby Wood, Booker Foundation literary director, ‘and especially surprising to the judges themselves, who had admired many books by more established authors, and regretted having to let them go. It is perhaps obvious that powerful stories can come from unexpected places and in unfamiliar forms; nevertheless, this kaleidoscopic list serves as a reminder.’
Chosen from 162 submissions, the longlist features authors from the UK, US, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Ethiopia. The award, now sponsored by US-based charitable foundation Crankstart, is open to novels published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2019 and 30 September 2020.
The shortlist will be announced on 15 September, with the winner to follow in November.
For more information on this year’s longlist, see the Booker website.
