Five American Authors Make the Longlist for 2015 Man Booker Prize

Posted on July 30, 2015

Five American authors have made the longlist for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. The prestigious award gives 50,000 pounds sterling to the author who wrote the best novel of the year published in English. There are thirteen finalists, five of whom are Americans.

This year's longlist is an interesting one, with a wide-ranging list of authors from a number of countries, now that the eligibility has been expanded beyond the UK. The American finalists are Bill Clegg for Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape) , Laila Lalami for The Moor's Account (Periscope, Garnet Publishing), Marilynne Robinson for Lila (Virago), Anne Tyler for A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus), and Hanya Yanagihara for A Little Life (Picador).

British authors who made the long list are Tom McCarthy for Satin Island (Jonathan Cape), Andrew O'Hagan for The Illuminations (Faber & Faber) and Sunjeev Sahota for The Year of the Runaways (Picador). The other authors are from Jamaica (Marlon James for A Brief History of Seven Killings), Ireland (Anne Enright for The Green Road, Nigeria (Chigozie Obioma for The Fishermen, India (Anuradha Roy for Sleeping on Jupiter) and New Zealand (Anna Smaill for The Chimes). Marlon James, who actually lives in Minneapolis, is the first Jamaican-born author to be nominated for the prize. Laila Lalami is the first Moroccan-born author to be nominated for the prize. She also lives in the U.S.; she makes Santa Monica her home.

The list will be narrowed down to six books. The shortlist will be announced on September 15th, and the winner on October 13th at a black tie dinner in London. The ceremony is broadcast by the BBC. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC. This year's judges are Chairman Michael Wood, Ellah Wakatoma Allfrey, Sam Leith, John Burnside and Frances Osborne. The judges had their work cut out for them: they considered 156 books for this year's prize.

Judges Chair Michael Wood had this to say about this year's competition: "We had a great time choosing this list. Discussions weren’t always peaceful, but they were always very friendly. We were lucky in our companions and the submissions were extraordinary. The longlist could have been twice as long, but we're more than happy with our final choice...The range of different performances and forms of these novels is amazing. All of them do something exciting with the language they have chosen to use."