Thirteen novels make up the Booker Dozen longlist, a list with a lot of new names that few predicted. Six are by women, seven by men, with five American writers, six British, one Canadian and one South African.

The biggest name is probably two-time winner J.M.Coetzee and there are the familiar names of Deborah Levy (shortlisted in 2012 for Swimming Home), Elizabeth Strout and AL Kennedy, as well as four debut authors.

Chair of the 2016 judges, Amanda Foreman, commented:

‘This is a very exciting year. The range of books is broad and the quality extremely high. Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be…From the historical to the contemporary, the satirical to the polemical, the novels in this list come from both established writers and new voices. The writing is uniformly fresh, energetic and important. It is a longlist to be relished.’

The Longlist – click on the title to find a Goodreads summary of the book

Paul Beatty (US) – The Sellout 

J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) – The Schooldays of Jesus 

A.L. Kennedy (UK) – Serious Sweet

Deborah Levy (UK) – Hot Milk 

Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) – His Bloody Project

Ian McGuire (UK) – The North Water 

David Means (US) – Hystopia

Wyl Menmuir (UK) – The Many 

Ottessa Moshfegh (US) – Eileen

Virginia Reeves (US) – Work Like Any Other 

Elizabeth Strout (US) – My Name Is Lucy Barton

David Szalay (Canada-UK) – All That Man Is 

Madeleine Thien (Canada) – Do Not Say We Have Nothing 

I’m focusing on reading Women In Translation #WITMonth during August, so I won’t be reading too many on this list, though I have dipped into Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing, the book that appeals to me the most – a story of musicians, composers, two generations of an extended family, from the Chinese cultural revolution to a new life in modern-day Vancouver.

I’m also keep to read Deborah Levy and can tell you that Elizabeth Strout’s book My Name is Lucy Barton has had many great reviews.

For now, I’m 100 pages into reading last years Man Booker Prize winner by Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings and wow – it’s like entering into another world, a dark, dangerous, impulsive world inside a Jamaican ghetto, via a range of characters and voices.

The Shortlist and Winner Announcements

The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday 13 September and the winner will be announced on Tuesday 25 October.

Click Here to Buy Any Book On the Longlist Via Book Depository

So, have you read any of the books on the list?