The Booker Prize for fiction shortlist for 2024, announced recently, featured the largest-ever number of women authors in its 55-year history as well as its first Dutch author.
Five women and one man are in the running for the prestigious literary prize, from a longlist of 13 authors. They include writers from Australia, the Netherlands, Britain, Canada and the US.
English pottery-maker, author and chair of the judges Edmund de Waal said the shortlist comprised of "books that made us want to keep on reading, to ring up friends and tell them about them, novels that inspired us to write, to score music, and even - in my case - to go back to my wheel and make pots".
Among them is spy novel Creation Lake by American Rachel Kushner, who was shortlisted in 2018 as well.
Set in a remote outpost in France, the book follows an American secret agent whose mission is to infiltrate a group of radical eco-activists.
British author Samantha Harvey, previously longlisted in 2009, made the cut this year with Orbital, which follows six astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).
Yael van der Wouden is the first Dutch author to be shortlisted with her debut novel, The Safekeep, a family drama set in the Netherlands 15 years after the end of the second World War.
The other authors on the shortlist are American Percival Everett for novel James, Canadian Anne Michaels for Held, and Australian Charlotte Wood for Stone Yard Devotional.
The Booker is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in Britain or Ireland between Oct 1, 2023 and Sept 30, 2024.
The Booker Prize ceremony will take place on Nov 12. Each of the shortlisted authors will receive £2,500 (RM14,042), and the winner will get £50,000 (RM281,000).
Last year's winner was Irish author Paul Lynch and his dystopian novel Prophet Song. - AFP
