The Shortlist was announced today for the 2021 Booker Prize. The thirteen titles on the Longlist have been whittled down to six:
- Anuk Arudpragasam - A Passage North (Sri Lanka)
- Damon Galgut - The Promise (South Africa)
- Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This (USA)
- Nadifa Mohamed - The Fortune Men (UK)
- Richard Powers - Bewilderment (USA)
- Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle (USA)
Chair of the Booker Prize judges, Maya Jasanoff described the shortlist as follows:
"Some are acutely introspective, taking us into the mind of a Tamil man tracing the scars of Sri Lanka's civil war, and an American woman unplugging from the internet to cope with a family crisis. Some enter communities in the throes of historical transformation: the Cardiff docklands in the early years of British decolonisation, and the veld around Pretoria in the last years of apartheid. And some have global sweep, following a mid-century aviator in her attempt to circumnavigate the planet, and a present-day astrobiologist raising a son haunted by climate change."
This is an interesting shortlist without an obvious front runner. I haven't read any of these books yet (as always, whenever I read a longlisted title it is guaranteed not to make the shortlist!). But I really want to read the titles by Nadifa Mohamed, Maggie Shipstead and Anuk Arundpragasam.
The reactions of authors are captured in the shortlist announcement released by the Booker Prize.
The Winner of the Booker Prize, and recipient of £50,000, will be revealed in November. Better get reading!