News Mania Desk/ Piyal Chatterjee / 17th September 2024
The largest number of female authors in the 55-year history of the Booker Prize is represented on the 2024 shortlist, which was just released.
The famous literary prize is open to works of fiction written in English by authors anywhere in the world and published in the UK or Ireland. Five women and one man have been named to the shortlist. The first Dutch writer to be shortlisted and the first Australian novelist in ten years are also on this year’s list. The remaining six authors on the list are Americans, British, and Canadian.
Written from the viewpoint of escaped slave Jim, “James” by Percival Everett (US) is a retelling of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The 2001 book “Erasure” by Becky Ann Everett was made into the film American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright, and taking home the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar earlier this year for director Cord Jefferson.
The book “Orbital” by UK author Samantha Harvey chronicles the 24-hour journey of six astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). The author stated she wanted to write about our human occupation of low Earth orbit for the last 25 years—not as science fiction, but as realism .
In the suspenseful thriller “Creation Lake” by US author Rachel Kushner, a lady infiltrates a radical anarchist collective in rural France. Kushner’s work “The Mars Room” was previously shortlisted for the 2018 Booker Prize.
The family drama “Held” by Canadian author Anne Michaels examines the recollections of four generations. Michaels’ poetry and 1996 book “Fugitive Pieces” are her most well-known works.
Yael van der Wouden’s (Netherlands) debut book, “The Safekeep,” is a lesbian love story set in a post-Nazi Netherlands that explores the treatment of Jews. One of her other projects is an advice column with a David Attenborough theme. “A short story I once wrote about three siblings out for dinner and the additional girlfriend everyone hates,” the author stated, “was the inspiration for the book. I wanted to explore desire as the flipside of repulsion.” The Dutch have a fascination with how they narrate national history.
Australian novelist Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional” tells the story of a middle-aged woman who enters a convent in New South Wales to live a hermit’s life. Wood is the first Australian writer to be shortlisted in ten years, since Richard Flanagan, whose book “The Narrow Road To The Deep North” won the 2014 Booker Prize.
The winner will get £50,000 (€59,000), while the other shortlisted authors will receive £2,500 (€2,968).
The panel of judges for this year’s competition is led by writer and artist Edmund de Waal, and includes the following members: novelist Sara Collins, composer and musician Nitin Sawhney, fiction editor of The Guardian Justine Jordan, and author and lecturer Yiyun Li.
