PJE's Booker Blog

The 2019 Booker Prize Shortlist

The Booker Prize shortlist was announced this morning and somehow it seems even heavier than the longlist:

Margaret Atwood - The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
Lucy Ellmann - Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
Chigozie Obioma - An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)
Salman Rushdie - Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)
Elif Shafak - 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)

This year's chair of judges Hay Festival director Peter Florence said that the six books "teem with life, with a profound and celebratory humanity", while Gaby Wood, Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said the judges have found "a set of novels that is political, orchestral, fearless, felt. And now, by association, those six will be in fruitful conversation with one another.”

The bookies seem to be baffled by it. Ladbrokes make Lucy Ellmann's thousand-page monologue the 3/1 favourite, whereas William Hill have her as the 10/1 outsider and Chigozie Obioma the favourite at 7/4. Both are offering 4/1 against Margaret Atwood who I imagine will attract some interest from punters. Little is yet known about The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, as it is not published until next week, and has been distributed on a need-to-read basis and subject to fierce non-disclosure agreements which may-or-may-not involve cattle-prods.

The £50,000 prize is now sponsored by Crankstart, a charitable foundation set up by Welsh-born Time-Magazine-journalist-turned-venture-capitalist-billionaire, Sir Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman. The winner will be announced at the Guildhall in London on Monday 14th October.

posted by PJE @ 2:30 PM