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The Man Booker Prize Longlist 2016 #FinestFiction

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.

Booker Longlist

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 

WIT logoI’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?

15 thoughts on “The Man Booker Prize Longlist 2016 #FinestFiction”

  2. I bought a copy of Do Not Say We Have Nothing last week and included it in my predictions list so I’m very pleased that it’s on the longlist! I really liked Eileen although I think it’s a book which will divide people. I still haven’t got round to reading A Brief History of Seven Killings and must get to it soon!

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    • You did well with your predictions, there are a lot of relatively little known titles here, which in itself is good, just a pity there isn’t more cultural diversity in the spread in terms of what I like to read, but the Madeleine Thien is there at least. Bonne Courage with your summer reading!

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  3. Thanks for info. Lots of exciting reads before the list is narrowed down. Like you, I’m most interested to read Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing too, and E. Strout’s Lucy Barton.

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    • I’m looking forward to the Madeleine Thien though may not get back to it in August as I lent it to a friend and I have a huge pile of #WITMonth women in translation books to tackle before I consider anything else!

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  4. I was bit surprised they chose so many from UK and US authors – it feels like it’s becoming the very thing people feared it would be when entry was changed. Of those on list I’ve read Lucy Barton ( great) and Hot Milk ( good though surprised made the list). I had couple of others on my list already having read good things about them and parochial Scot that I am His Bloody Project is in my summer holiday pile. I made mistake of trying Brief History on audiobook and got completely lost so have had to abandon and try the printed version instead!

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    • Yes, I admit that when I see the diversity I get a bit of the thrill and excitement and this list gave little thrill, except to see Madeleine Thien’s book, the only one writing outside of the Anglo tradition, but glad to hear you’ve spotted a few that take your fancy. Imagining listening to Brief History on audio makes me remember being at a party with a lot of friends from Nigeria in London, where my very good friend asked me if I was having trouble following their English – well yes I said, I think I’m going deaf – not so, it was the pidgin English, which sounds like you should understand but made no sense at all! I’m doing ok reading the Jamaican patois, just going with the flow, letting the music of it wash over me, discordant and violent though it may be.

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  7. I have read three so far, just finishing My Name is Lucy Barton, which I adore. The Sellout by Paul Beatty? Not so much. It is hard for me not to get all personal with what I read; apparently I put all my emotion into it, and he was able to trigger many strong feelings for me. Ugly feelings, of being accused and judged. I am told not to personalize things, but so far that is a skill I haven’t mastered. So, for triggering an emotional response, both of those writers get an A+, but for very different reasons.

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