Man Booker 2018 Longlist Announced

The 2018 Man Booker Prize longlist has just been announced:

Author and Title:

Belinda Bauer (UK) Snap
Anna Burns (UK) Milkman
Nick Drnaso (USA) Sabrina
Esi Edugyan (Canada) Washington Black
Guy Gunaratne (UK) In Our Mad and Furious City
Daisy Johnson (UK) Everything Under
Rachel Kushner (USA) The Mars Room
Sophie Mackintosh (UK) The Water Cure
Michael Ondaatje (Canada) Warlight
Richard Powers (USA) The Overstory
Robin Robertson (UK) The Long Take
Sally Rooney (Ireland) Normal People
Donal Ryan (Ireland) From A Low And Quiet Sea

This year’s longlist includes 6 writers from the UK; 3 from the U.S.; 2 from Canada; and 2 from  Ireland. Seven of the authors are women. For the first time, a graphic novel, Sabrina, has been nominated.

Reconsider Returning to the Original Man Booker Eligibility Criteria

aliteraryreeder

This coming Tuesday, on July 24, the Man Booker Prize 2018 longlist will be announced in London. It’s a pity that the Prize committee changed its eligibility rules a few years back. I favored the original sui generis eligibility criteria, where only British authors and authors from the former Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe could qualify for the competition.
Now it is open to all authors of books written in English, no matter where they come from, as long as the book they wrote was published in the UK. Distinctiveness of the competition is a thing of the past. As most expected, the American publishing industry with its financial and marketing clout has dominated the submission process. The last two winners have been American.
I think that it is time for the committee to seriously reconsider going back to the original eligibility rules and restore the unique nature of the Man…

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A Fond Irish Memory

It was a perfect early summer day (June 22, 2018) on Lough Gill, in the heart of Yeats country, as our guide and boatman George read to us the poet’s “The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water.” A memory to be cherished forever.
I heard the old, old men say,
‘Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.’
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old, men say
‘All that’s beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.’
( William Butler Yeats)