NoViolet Bulawayo, Percival Everett, Alan Garner, Shehan Karunatilaka, Claire Keegan and Elizabeth Strout are today, Tuesday September 6th, announced as the six authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022. Announced live from an event at the Serpentine Pavilion in London, and streamed to readers around the world via the Booker Prizes website and social media channels. The six shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.

The six shortlisted authors represent five different nationalities and four continents, with an equal split of men and women on the list.

Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo makes her second shortlist appearance with Glory, following We Need New Names in 2013.

The majority of the shortlist is inspired by real events, from the Sri Lankan civil war and the fall of Mugabe to the Magdalene laundries scandal and the murder of Emmett Till.

The list features the oldest author ever to be shortlisted: octogenarian Alan Garner with Treacle Walker; he will celebrate his 88th birthday on the night of the winner ceremony.

Half of the list is published by independent publishers, including first time appearances from Influx Press and Sort of Books.

At 116 pages, Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is the shortest book by page numbers to be recognised in the prize’s history – the shortest to win was Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) at 132 pages. Although Treacle Walker is shorter by word count.

This year’s shortlist were chosen by the 2022 judging panel: cultural historian, writer and broadcaster Neil MacGregor (Chair); academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari; historian Helen Castor; novelist and critic M John Harrison; and novelist, poet and professor Alain Mabanckou.

Their selection was made from 169 novels published between October 1, 2021 and September 30, 2022 and submitted to the prize by publishers. The Booker Prize is open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.

The 2022 Shortlist is:

NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwean) with Glory

Percival Everett (US) with The Trees 

Alan Garner (British) with Treacle Walker

Shehan Karunatilaka (Sri Lankan) with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida 

Claire Keegan (Irish) with Small Things Like These 

Elizabeth Strout (US) with Oh William! 

Neil MacGregor, Chair of the 2022 Judges, says:

"These six books we believe speak powerfully about important things. Set in different places at different times, they are all about events that in some measure happen everywhere, and concern us all. Each written in English, they demonstrate what an abundance of Englishes there are, how many distinct worlds, real and imaginary, exist in that simple-seeming space, the Anglosphere. 

"Two — Oh, William! and Treacle Walker —  are about the inner life, as a young boy and a middle-aged woman, in their particular ways, come to a new understanding of who they are and what they might become. The other four books address long national histories of cruelty and injustice, in Sri Lanka and Ireland, Zimbabwe and the United States, and in each case the enduring historical tensions provide the dilemmas in which the characters, like their societies, are put on the rack.  

"Why did we choose these six?  

"In every one, the author uses language not only to tell us what happens, but to create a world which we, outsiders, can enter and inhabit — and not merely by using words from local languages or dialects. NoViolet Bulawayo’s incantatory repetitions induct us all into a Zimbabwean community of memory and expectation, just as Alan Garner’s shamanic obliquities conjure a realm that reason alone could never access. Percival Everett and Shehan Karunatilaka spin fantastical verbal webs of Gothic horror — and humour — that could not be further removed from the hypnotic, hallucinatory clarity of Claire Keegan’s and Elizabeth Strout’s pared-down prose. Most important, all affirm the importance and the power of finding and sharing the truth."  

The 2022 winner will be announced on Monday October 17th in an award ceremony held at the Roundhouse and fully in person for the first time since 2019. The winner receives £50,000 and can expect international recognition and a dramatic increase in global book sales.

The announcement will be broadcast live as part of a Front Row special on BBC Radio 4 from 9.15-10.00pm, with TV coverage expected to run on BBC News at Ten and news channels.

Ahead of the winner announcement, there will be two opportunities for readers to hear from the shortlisted authors in person. In an event held in partnership with Waterstones, the writers will appear in conversation at the Shaw Theatre in Kings Cross, London, on Friday October 14th. Chaired by broadcaster and journalist Bidisha, the six authors will each deliver a reading from their shortlisted book.

The following day, on Saturday October 15th, the shortlisted authors will be take part in The Times & The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. The Booker Prize shortlist event will be chaired by Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, Gaby Wood.

The 2021 Booker Prize for Fiction was won by Damon Galgut with The Promise. In the two weeks after it won the 2021 Booker Prize The Promise sold 1,925% more copies in the UK than it had in the previous two weeks. According to The Bookseller, in the 12 weeks after his win, Galgut sold more copies of his books that he had in the previous 17 years since first being published in the UK. Rights to The Promise have been sold in 35 territories.

The first public event with the Booker Prize 2022 winner takes place on Thursday October 20th at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of London Literature Festival 2022, alongside Galgut, who will hand over the baton. The 2022 winner and Galgut are in conversation with novelist and former lawyer Sara Collins.

We are running a competition to win the shortlist here, enter the competition now!

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