Books
Book awards season is shifting into high gear, folks. The six books on the 2019 Booker Prize shortlist were announced Tuesday morning, and you're going to want to read as many of them as possible before the 2019 Booker Prize winner is revealed on Oct. 14. I've got everything you need to know about this year's Booker candidates below, so keep reading to find out more about English literature's greatest achievements from the past year.
Margaret Atwood fans will be happy to know that the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, titled The Testaments, is still in the running for the 2019 Booker Prize and its £50,000 (around $61,000) monetary award. Also among the contenders is Lucy Ellmann's inventive novel, Ducks, Newburyport — a novel that's over 1,000 pages long and mostly told in one sentence. The authors of the six books on the 2019 Booker Prize shortlist will receive £2,500 (about $3,000) each.
Released back in June, the 2019 Booker Prize longlist contained 13 books, each with the potential to take home both the literary award and the £50,000. Thanks to the Tuesday-morning announcement, readers now know which of those longlisted titles are no longer eligible to receive the 2019 Booker Prize. The eliminated novels are:
- Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
- My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
- The Wall by John Lanchester
- The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
- Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
- Lanny by Max Porter
- Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
Here are the six books on the 2019 Booker Prize shortlist. Look for the announcement of this year's Booker Prize winner on Oct. 14.
'The Testaments' by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood has kept the lid tight on her Sep. 10 release, The Testaments, which takes place 15 years after Offred's flight from Gilead at the end of The Handmaid's Tale. Publisher Nan A. Talese has announced that three women will narrate the book's story, but little beyond that is known about this sequel to Atwood's most well known novel.
'Ducks, Newburyport' by Lucy Ellmann
Drawing comparisons to James Joyce's Ulysses, and altogether relevant in the age of Trump, Lucy Ellmann's ambitious novel takes readers inside the head of a working-class Ohio woman for a stream-of-consciousness narrative that spans more than 1,000 pages in paperback.
'Girl, Woman, Other' by Bernardine Evaristo
A collection of 12 connected stories centered largely on black British women's experiences, Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other is the author's eighth work of fiction.
'An Orchestra of Minorities' by Chigozie Obioma
In this modern-day take on The Odyssey, a Nigerian poultry farmer saves the life of a young, suicidal woman by sacrificing two of his chickens. As they draw close to one another, the young couple have their relationship questioned by those who judge the would-be groom for his lack of connections, forcing him to pursue a college degree at a European university.
'Quichotte' by Salman Rushdie
From celebrated author Salman Rushdie — whose 1981 novel, Midnight's Children, was a Booker Prize winner — comes this new retelling of Don Quixote, in which a salesman falls in love with a TV star.
'10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World' by Elif Shafak
A woman's thoughts race in the moments following her death, her memories powering Elif Shafak's new novel. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World shifts between Tequila Leila's fading consciousness and the friends who are determined to find her.
