LONDON: American writers Elizabeth Strout and Percival Everett face off against British, Irish, Zimbabwean and Sri Lankan writers as finalists for fiction’s prestigious Booker Prize.
Strout’s symphony of everyday life, ‘Oh William!’ increase.
Other contenders include Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo, the animal fable “Glory,” and Irish author Claire Keegan’s “Small Things Like These.” “The Seven Months of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karnatilaka, Sri Lanka.
British fantasy author Alan Garner (oldest possible booker of all time at 87) is on the list of “molasses walkers”.
Chairman of the judging panel, former British Museum director Neil McGregor, said some of the books were inspired by real events and said they were “a long national history of cruelty and injustice in Sri Lanka and Ireland, Zimbabwe and the United States.” I am working on it,” he said.
“It’s set in different places at different times, and they’re all about events that happen everywhere to some extent and that concern us all,” he said of Shortlist.
Established in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming the careers of writers and was initially open only to British, Irish and Commonwealth authors. In 2014, eligibility was extended to all English-language novels published in the UK.
Last year’s winner was “The Promise” by Damon Gargut from South Africa.
The winner will be crowned at an awards ceremony in London on October 17th.
