It’s that time of the year, when the long list for one of the most prestigious literary prizes in literature is here. It’s time for the Man Booker long list 2018 and it’s already come under much praise and criticism.
On Twitter, criticism has already been laid for the lack of diversity in authors in the list, something that seems to be becoming a bit of a regular occurrence for many of the bigger literary prizes. However, the list has also been praised for including a graphic novel for the first time in the prize’s history.
Anyway, it’s the list you’re waiting for so without further ado, here it is along with the thoughts from the Man Booker judges.
Belinda Bauer – Snap
“An acute, stylish, intelligent novel about how we survive trauma. Expertly paced, Snap offers a beautiful evocation of the lives of children, and how they perceive and manage tragedy.”
Anna Burns – Milkman
“At the intersection of class, race, gender and sexual violence, it deals with oppression and power with a Beckettian sense of humour, offering a wholly original take on Ireland in the time of the Troubles through the mind of a young girl.”
Nick Drnaso – Sabrina
“Oblique, subtle, minimal, unmanipulative: the style of the pictures is the book’s worldview. Drnaso uses images to express an idea about what’s invisible – an idea about uncertainty, and the different kinds of holes that missing people leave in our lives.”
Esi Edugyan – Washington Black
“A dazzling exploration of race in the Atlantic world, which also manages to be a yarn and a chase story. It manages to keep you on the edge of your seat, while making you, as a reader, want to savour every moment.”
Guy Gunaratne – In Our Mad and Furious City
“An ambitious mosaic of virtuosic ventriloquism, Guy Gunaratne’s book is an inner city novel for our times, exploring the endurance of social trauma across generations, and conveying the agony and energy of the marginalised, the outsider, and the oppressed.”
In Our Mad and Furious City US
In Our Mad and Furious City UK
Daisy Johnson – Everything Under
“A hypnotic, mythic, unexpected story from a beguiling new voice. Everything Under is an exploration of family, gender, the ways we understand each other and the hands we hold out to each other – a story that’s like the waterways at its heart.”
Rachel Kushner – The Mars Room
“A novel about gender, class and the absolute corruption of the American dream, The Mars Room explores the meaning of incarceration in our moment. It feels terrifyingly authentic.”
Sophie Mackintosh – The Water Cure
“This chilling, beautifully written novel explores the ways in which extreme parental protection can fail, and unpicks patriarchy at its core, forcing us to ask what it means to survive, indeed whether it is possible to survive, in a man’s world.”
Michael Ondaatje – Warlight
“Wonderfully atmospheric, beautifully paced, subtle storytelling. Warlight contains an incredible array of characters through whom Ondaatje tells the hidden, barely spoken, tale of war, especially as it impacts on children.”
Richard Powers – The Overstory
“An ecological epic, a novel of ideas, The Overstory begins with five apparently distinct narratives and then binds them into a compelling network of connections.”
Robin Robertson – The Long Take
“A book about a man and a city in shock, it’s an extraordinary evocation of the debris and the ongoing destruction of war even in times of peace., Robin Robertson shows the flexibility a poet can bring to form and style.”
Sally Rooney – Normal People
“A very intimate character study of two young people trying to figure out how to love each other, Normal People is written in compressed, composed, allusive prose that invites you read behind the lines”
Donal Ryan – From A Low and Quiet Sea
“A deft, unshowy novel about manhood and momentous contingency, it evokes the way in which real lives unfold and wrap around each other.”
So that’s the entire longlist, have you read any yet? If you have please consider sending us a review. The shortlist will be announced on September 20th and we’ll bring you that as soon as it’s announced, then the winner will be declared on October 16th!
The For Reading Addicts Book of the Year 2023
Robert Maxwell Biography Among Costa Book Award Winners
Female winner of 1m Euro literary prize turns out to be three men
Marcus Rashford Named FutureBook Person of the Year
2021 Nobel Prize Winner Announced
2021 Kindle Storyteller Shortlist Announced!