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Booker Prize 2022: Leila Mottley Youngest Longlist Author

LONDON — Best-selling American writers Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Strout, and Leila Mottley are among 13 authors in the running for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction.

Fowler’s novel about Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, Booth, Strout’s symphony of everyday lives, William, how sweet!, and Mottley’s Oakland-set debut, NightcrawlingThe six American books on the shortlist for the prize worth 50,000 pounds ($60,000) are authored by. List announced Tuesday includes writers from Britain and Ireland as well as Sri Lankan, Sri Lankan, and Zimbabwean authors.

Mottley, 20, is the youngest ever Booker Prize nominee. This is a story about racism and sexual exploitation that Mottley wrote while she was still just a teenager. Nightcrawling has won rave reviews and selection by Oprah’s Book Club.

Continue reading: Elizabeth Strout Knows We Can’t Escape the Past

Alan Garner (british fantasy writer), is on the list Treacle WalkerAt 87 years old, she is the oldest Booker nominee.

From 169 submissions by publishers, five awards judges chose the contenders. Former British Museum director Neil MacGregor, who is chairing the judging panel, said the list “offers story, fable and parable, fantasy, mystery, meditation, and thriller.” He said many of the books have plots driven by “long histories of conflict and injustice” and grapple with “the elusive nature of truth.”

Mottley is one of three debut novelists are on the list, alongside Britain’s Maddie Mortimer (Our spectacular bodies mappedSelby Wynn Schwartz is an American author.Sappho).

Both Fowler and Strout have been Booker nominees in the past. Other repeat finalists are Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo, for animal fable Glory, and Scotland’s Graeme Macrae Burnet, for psychological mystery Case Study.

Continue reading: These are the 100 must-read books for 2021

Rounding out the field are Trust, by U.S. writer Hernan Diaz; American author Percival Everett’s Trees; Irish writer Claire Keegan’s These are small things like these; The Colony by Ireland’s Audrey Magee; and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sri Lanka’s Shehan Karunatilaka.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers and was originally open to British, Irish, and Commonwealth writers. The eligibility was extended to include all English-language novels published in the U.K. in 2014.

Last year’s winner was The Promise, by South Africa’s Damon Galgut.

Six books will be shortlisted and announced September 6. The winning book will be unveiled in London Oct. 17.

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