Latest Longlists: Booker International and Orange Prizes

There was a bit of a buzz around the office today--"the Booker longlist is out already?!?"--but it's the Man Booker International, not the main Booker, which gets going later in the year. The Booker International is a lovely idea for an award that to my mind hasn't really developed its identity yet. Every two years a new jury of three chooses one living writer, from any country as long as some of their work has been translated into English, to award £60,000 as a lifetime achievement award for "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage." With only two awards so far (to Albania's Ismail Kadare and Nigeria's Chinua Achebe), and with so long between the prizes, it's hard to build up a critical mass for what the award represents. Would they give it to someone who's already won the Nobel, for instance, or does it function as a sort of gap-filler for writers who have been denied the big prize?

The current jury (who seem to have read endlessly in preparation--I nominate myself for the 2011 jury, please) is Jane Smiley, Amit Chaudhuri, and Andrey Kurkov. Each time they start over with a new longlist, and here are the fourteen 2009 contenders:

• Peter Carey (Australia)
• Evan S. Connell (USA)
• Mahasweta Devi (India)
• E.L. Doctorow (USA)
• James Kelman (UK)
• Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
• Arnošt Lustig (Czechoslovakia)
• Alice Munro (Canada)
• V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)
• Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
• Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
• Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya)
• Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)
• Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

Connell, who has worked in many forms but is best known for his Custer book, Son of the Morning Star, and his Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge diptych, is the surprise pick among the Americans. Among the non-English speakers, there are many I'm almost completely unfamiliar with (which, perhaps, is one point of the award). The Literary Saloon, my first stop for non-English book award commentary, hasn't weighed in yet on the choices, but I'm sure will soon. Naipaul is the only Nobelist on the list, though Vargas Llosa, Oates, and Munro are often tipped as contenders. The winner will be announced in May.

And meanwhile, the twenty titles on the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist (fiction by women published in the UK between April 2008 and March 2009--which explains the appearance of Intuition, which came out in the States in early 2006):

• Debra Adelaide, The Household Guide to Dying
• Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress
• Lissa Evans, Their Finest Hour and a Half (available on Amazon.co.uk)
• Bernardine Evaristo, Blonde Roots
• Ellen Feldman, Scottsboro
• Laura Fish, Strange Music (UK)
• V.V. Ganeshananthan, Love Marriage
• Allegra Goodman, Intuition
• Samantha Harvey, The Wilderness
• Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else
• Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog
• Deirdre Madden, Molly Fox’s Birthday
• Toni Morrison, A Mercy
• Gina Ochsner, The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight
• Marilynne Robinson, Home
• Preeta Samarasan, Evening Is the Whole Day
• Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows
• Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
• Miriam Toews, The Flying Troutmans
• Ann Weisgarber, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

Last year's winner was Rose Tremain for The Road Home. This year's shortlist is announced on April 21 and the winner on June 3. --Tom