No Indian author has made the list for the Booker Prize this year. Indian author Aravind Adiga won the Booker prize for his debut novel The White Tiger in 2008, the last time an Indian author won the award.
The 13-book selection has been described as the most diverse longlist, with authors from Britain, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Ireland.
Only two writers out of this year’s longlist have been shortlisted for Booker before: Colm Tóibín was shortlisted twice for The Blackwater Lightship in 1999 and The Master in 2004 and Jim Crace, who is 67, was shortlisted for the Booker in 1997 for Quarantine.
Seven of the 13 authors are women and three are debut authors.
“This is surely the most diverse longlist in Man Booker history: wonderfully various in terms of geography, form, length and subject. These 13 outstanding novels range from the traditional to the experimental, from the first century AD to the present day, from 100 pages to 1,000 and from Shanghai to Hendon,” Cambridge academic and writer Robert Macfarlane, who is the head of the jury, said.
The longlist was chosen from 151 titles, of which 14 were called in by the jury, which includes broadcaster Martha Kearney; academic Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, broadcaster Natalie Haynes and Stuart Kelly, essayist and former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday.