Booker Prize 2019 Longlist

Eight women and five men have been named today (July 24) to the “Booker Dozen” longlist of 13 titles in the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction cycle. In an announcement released just after midnight BST, the Booker Foundation has named a roster that includes two former Booker winners–Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie–and one debut, written by Oyinkan Braithwaite, one of two Nigerian authors on the list.
And the tone of the commentary around the announcement emphasizes the Booker’s commitment to its “evolved” state, open to writers beyond the UK and Commonwealth, providing they were writing novels in English and published in the UK.
This is the change made at the end of 2013, intended, according to the foundation, “to embrace the English language in all its vigor, its vitality, its versatility and its glory.” The program has endured sharp criticism at times for its expanded footing, but with its new US-based sponsorship from the California-based Crankstart charity created by Michael Moritz and Harriet Heyman, there’s no sign of a retreat to the earlier, less internationalized approach.
Authors in this round of the 2019 program alone are from the UK, Canada, Ireland, Nigeria, the United States, Mexico, Italy, India, and Turkey.

The new longlist for the world’s leading prize for fiction in English was chosen from 151 novels published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2018, and September 30 of this year. The Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK or Ireland.

The winner of the 2019 Booker Prize receives £50,000 (US$62,180) and normally benefits from a significant boost in sales and visibility, of course. In the week following the 2018 winner announcement–you’ll find Publishing Perspectives’ coverage here –sales of Milkman by Anna Burns increased by 880 percent from 963 in the week prior to the announcement to 9,446 in the week following the announcement, then a further 99 percent (9,446 to 18,786) the following week.

“There are Nobel candidates and debutants on this list. There are no favorites; they are all credible winners.”Peter Florence

The total number of copies of Milkman sold, across all formats, is currently 546,500. Milkman has also now sold into nearly 40 languages, in Europe and many parts of Asia.

The shortlist of six books is scheduled to be announced on September 3 at a morning news conference in the British capital.

The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 (US$3,109) and a specially bound edition of their book.

The 2019 winner is to be announced on October 14, shortly before this year’s Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16 to 20) at an awards ceremony once more set at London’s Guildhall. The ceremony is expected to be broadcast by the BBC.

Booker Prize 2019 Longlist

Author	Country	Title	Publisher/Imprint
Margaret Atwood	Canada	The Testaments	Vintage, Chatto & Windus
Kevin Barry	Ireland	Night Boat to Tangier	Canongate Books
Oyinkan Braithwaite	Nigeria	My Sister, The Serial Killer	Atlantic Books
Lucy Ellmann	USA/UK	Ducks, Newburyport	Galley Beggar Press
Bernadine Evfaristo	UK	Girl, Woman, Other	Hamish Hamilton
John Lanchester	UK	The Wall	Faber & Faber
Deborah Levy	UK	The Man Who Saw Everything	Hamish Hamilton
Valeria Luiselli	Mexico/Italy	Lost Children Archive	4th Estate
Chigozie Obioma	Nigeria	An Orchestra of Minorities	Little, Brown
Max Porter	UK	Lanny	Faber & Faber
Salman Rushdie	UK/India	Quichotte	Jonathan Cape
Elif Shafak	UK/Turkey	10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World	Viking
Jeanette Winterson	UK	Frankissstein	Jonathan Cape

via https://publishingperspectives.com/2019/07/booker-prize-2019-longlist-first-cycle-crankstart-sponsorship-atwood-rushdie/