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Thirteen works have been nominated for this year’s Booker Prize, including six novels by American writers such as Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner and Richard Powers, organizers announced on Tuesday.
Everett’s book, James, retells Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of a fugitive slave; Kushner’s “Creation Lake” is an upcoming novel about a spy who infiltrates an environmental organization; and Powers’s other upcoming work, “Playground,” imagines a plan to send floating cities into the Pacific Ocean.
The Booker Prize is one of the most coveted prizes in the literary world and is awarded annually to a novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. Recent winners include Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Douglas Stewart’s Shuggie Bain. Last year’s winner was Paul Lynch’s novel Song of a Prophet, set in a near-future Ireland torn apart by civil war.
The Booker Prize was created in 1969 and for most of its history was open only to works by writers from Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth and Zimbabwe, but in 2014 the criteria were expanded to include all works written in English. Since then, members of the British literary establishment have often complained that the prize is dominated by American writers.
Tuesday’s announcement is likely to reignite those concerns, not least because only two novels by British writers were nominated: Samantha Harvey’s “Orbit,” about the daily lives of six astronauts orbiting Earth on a space station, and Sarah Perry’s “Initiation,” a story of unrequited love in a small English town.
In addition to Everett, Kushner and Powers’s novels, the other three American novels nominated are Rita Bullwinkle’s “Headshot,” set in a women’s boxing championship; Claire Messud’s “This Strange History,” a family saga exploring France’s colonial past; and “Wandering Stars,” by Tommy Orange, about the effects of colonization on a Native American family. Orange is the first Native American novel ever nominated for the Booker Prize.
The nominated books vary widely in subject and tone, but Edmund de Waal, the chairman of this year’s jury, said in a news release that all 13 have a similar emotional impact. “These are not ‘issue’ books,” he said. “They are works of fiction that put ideas into context by making us care deeply about people and their plight.”
De Waal added: “The fragility of life runs like mercury through our long list.”
The judges will narrow the shortlist to six books and plan to announce the finalists on September 16. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on November 12. – The New York Times
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