Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Booker longlist: Women dominate with London author in running for debut novel

Eve Harris, 34, who was born to Israeli-Polish parents in Chiswick, joins established writers led by Jim Crace and Colm Toibin on the list with her novel The Marrying of Chani Kaufman.

Harris worked for 12 years in inner-city comprehensives and independent schools in London and Tel Aviv before the teaching experience in north-west London that prompted her literary debut about a teenage girl preparing for an arranged marriage in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Out of Africa: NoViolet Bulawayo is another of seven women in the 13-strong longlist, for her novel set in a Zimbabwe shanty town

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She is one of seven women on the 13-strong longlist including NoViolet Bulawayo, 31, a Zimbabwe-born writer also nominated for her first book, We Need New Names, about life in a Zimbabwe shanty. The youngest contender is Eleanor Catton, 27, a New Zealander, with The Luminaries, an astrological murder mystery.

A third debut is Irish writer Donal Ryan who was rejected 47 times before his book, The Spinning Heart, was accepted for publication.

Robert Macfarlane, chairman of judges, said the long list had to be the most diverse in the history of the prize.

Contenders range from Richard House?s The Kills, a political thriller told in four interlinked novels, to Alison MacLeod?s wartime love story Unexploded, set in Brighton where she lives, and Tash Aw?s Five Star Billionaire, about the overlapping lives of Malaysian migrant workers, to Charlotte Mendelson?s Almost English, about Hungarian exiles and an English boarding school.

Big gun: Colm Toibin is one of the more established names on the list ?These 13 outstanding novels range from the traditional to the experimental, from the first century AD to the present day, from 100 pages to 1,000 and from Shanghai to Hendon,? Mr Macfarlane said.

The big guns in a list notable for the omission of star names are Jim Crace, 67, with Harvest, a novel he claimed would be his last, and Colm Toibin, 58, with The Testament of Mary, his depiction of the mother of Jesus. Both have been shortlisted before.

A shortlist will be announced in September and the winner of the ?50,000 prize on October 15.

Tash Aw,? Five Star Billionaire (Fourth Estate)

NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names (Chatto & Windus)

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries (Granta)

Jim Crace, Harvest (Picador)

Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (Sandstone Press)

Richard House, The Kills (Picador)

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Bloomsbury)

Alison MacLeod, Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton)

Colum McCann, TransAtlantic (Bloomsbury)

Charlotte Mendelson, Almost English (Mantle)

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (Canongate)

Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart (Doubleday Ireland)

Colm T?ib?n, The Testament of Mary (Viking)

Source: http://www.standard.co.uk/arts/book/booker-longlist-women-dominate-with-london-author-in-running-for-debut-novel-8728119.html

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