On Wednesday 13 September the Man Booker Prize revealed the shortlist of six books for the 2017 prize. The prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over four decades.
The shortlist, which features three women and three men, covers a wide range of subjects, from the struggle of a family trying to retain its self-sufficiency in rural England to a love story between two refugees seeking to flee and unnamed city in the throes of civil war.
Chair of judges Baroness Lola Young announced the shortlist at a press conference at the offices of Man Group, the prize sponsor.
The Man Booker Prize shortlist
- Paul Auster (US) – 4 3 2 1 (Faber & Faber)
- Emily Fridlund (US) – History of Wolves (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan-UK) – Exit West (Hamish Hamilton)
- Fiona Mozley (UK) – Elmet (JM Originals)
- George Saunders (US) – Lincoln in the Bardo (Bloomsbury)
- Ali Smith (UK) – Autumn (Hamish Hamilton)
You can download excellent Readers’ Guides for each of the books to find out more, and also read exclusive extracts from each title.
The judges’ view
Chair of the 2017 judges, Baroness Lola Young, says:
“With six unique and intrepid books that collectively push against the borders of convention, this year’s shortlist both acknowledges established authors and introduces new voices to the literary stage. Playful, sincere, unsettling, fierce; here is a group of novels grown from tradition but also radical and contemporary. The emotional, cultural, political and intellectual range of these books is remarkable, and the ways in which they challenge our thinking is a testament to the power of literature.”
Winner announcement
The 2017 winner will be announced on Tuesday 17 October in London’s Guildhall. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC.
The winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and can expect international recognition. In the week following the 2016 winner announcement, sales of The Sellout by Paul Beatty increased by 658%. To date over 360,000 print copies of the Oneworld edition have been sold, and 26 foreign language rights deals have been secured – 19 of which were sold since his win.
Get involved
Six of our fantastic reading groups have been selected to shadow the prize shortlist, reading and reviewing one of the books before the judges choose a winner. We will be introducing the groups on the website soon.
If your reading group would like to apply for similar opportunities in the future, please visit our Noticeboard.
You can listen to the brilliant Man Booker Prize podcast audio series on Soundcloud with Joe Haddow from Radio 2.
Have you read any of the shortlisted books? Are you surprised by any of the titles on the list? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter and Instagram using #FinestFiction and #ManBooker2017, or click on a title above to leave a review.
Remind yourself of the full ‘Man Booker Dozen’.
For more information, visit the Man Booker Prize website.
