On 24 July 2018 the Man Booker Prize revealed the ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 13 novels in competition for the 2018 prize. The Man Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for 50 years.
Don’t miss the chance for your reading group to get involved in this year’s prize – visit our Noticeboard by 10 September to find out more.
The longlist was a selected by a panel of five judges. Chaired by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a cultural theorist and novelist, the panel consists of: crime writer Val McDermid, cultural critic Leo Robson, academic Jacqueline Rose and artist and writer Leanne Shapton.
The Man Booker ‘Dozen’ 2018
- Belinda Bauer (UK) – Snap (Bantam Press)
- Anna Burns (UK) – Milkman (Faber & Faber)
- Nick Drnaso (USA) – Sabrina (Granta Books)
- Esi Edugyan (Canada) – Washington Black (Serpent’s Tail)
- Guy Gunaratne (UK) – In Our Mad And Furious City (Tinder Press)
- Daisy Johnson (UK) – Everything Under (Jonathan Cape)
- Rachel Kushner (USA) – The Mars Room (Jonathan Cape)
- Sophie Mackintosh (UK) – The Water Cure (Hamish Hamilton)
- Michael Ondaatje (Canada) – Warlight (Jonathan Cape)
- Richard Powers (USA) – The Overstory (William Heinemann)
- Robin Robertson (UK) – The Long Take (Picador)
- Sally Rooney (Ireland) – Normal People (Faber & Faber)
- Donal Ryan (Ireland) – From a Low and Quiet Sea (Doubleday Ireland)
The judges’ view
Chair of the 2018 judges, Kwame Anthony Appiah, says:
“Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the times, there were many dystopian fictions on our bookshelf – and many novels we found inspirational as well as disturbing. Some of those we have chosen for this longlist feel urgent and topical, others might have been admired and enjoyed in any year. All of these books – which take in slavery, ecology, missing persons, inner-city violence, young love, prisons, trauma, race – capture something about a world on the brink. Among their many remarkable qualities is a willingness to take risks with form. And we were struck, overall, by their disruptive power: these novels disrupted the way we thought about things we knew about, and made us think about things we didn’t know about. Still, despite what they have in common, every one of these books is wildly distinctive. It’s been an exhilarating journey so far and we’re looking forward to reading them again. But now we’ll have thousands and thousands of people reading along with us.”
Shortlist and winner
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Thursday 20 September. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
The 2018 winner will be announced on Tuesday 16 October at a black-tie dinner at London’s Guildhall. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC.
The winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and can expect international recognition. In the week following the 2017 winner announcement, sales of Lincoln in the Bardo increased by 227%. Bloomsbury has to date sold over 230k copies across all formats, 70% of those sales coming after the win.
Get involved
We have an exclusive opportunity for six reading groups to shadow the prize shortlist, reading and reviewing one of the books before the judges choose a winner. If you would like to apply, please visit our Noticeboard.
Listen to the brilliant Man Booker Prize podcast audio series on Soundcloud with Joe Haddow from Radio 2.
Have you read any of the longlisted books? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter and Instagram using #FinestFiction and #ManBooker2018, or click on a title above to leave a review.
For more information, visit the Man Booker Prize website.
