Rushdie, O’Neill Lead Booker Long List
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Salman Rushdie’s “Enchantress of Florence” and Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland” lead the long list, released Tuesday, for this year’s Man Booker Prize. The award, worth $100,000 in prize money and often considerably more in added exposure, is given each year to a novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
The list of 13 finalists, known as the “Man Booker Dozen” and chosen by a panel of five judges, also includes Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger,” Gaynor Arnold’s “Girl in a Blue Dress,” Sebastian Barry’s “The Secret Scripture,” John Berger’s “From A to X,” Michelle de Kretser’s “The Lost Dog,” Amitav Ghosh’s “Sea of Poppies,” Linda Grant’s “The Clothes on Their Backs,” Mohammed Hanif’s “A Case of Exploding Mangoes,” Philip Hensher’s “The Northern Clemency,” Tom Rob Smith’s “Child 44,” and Steve Toltz’s “A Fraction of the Whole.”
A former member of Parliament and cabinet minister, Michael Portillo, was the chairman of this year’s panel, which also included the editor of Granta, Alex Clark; a novelist, Louise Doughty; the founder of Ottakar’s bookshops, James Heneage, and a TV and radio broadcaster, Hardeep Singh Kohli.