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The stories deal with family, relationships, and personal struggles in a variety of backgrounds: war, climate change, racism, homophobia, poverty, alcoholism, neglect, national disintegration.
Such is the variety of readings on offer among the books shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, the winner of which will be announced Thursday night (starting at 2000 CET).
The six books, by four female and two male authors, were shortlisted in April for the award, which is awarded each year to the best original novel in English published in the UK or Ireland.
The traditional gala dinner in London has been scrapped due to the pandemic. The importance of this year’s award is underscored in a message from Booker Prize Foundation literary director Gaby Wood.
“We cannot go to an art gallery or the theater. We cannot listen to live music or sit in a movie theater. We cannot congregate, for any reason, for a time,” he writes. “One thing we can still do is read.”
The books on the short list are:
Dangarembga, one of Zimbabwe’s most awarded authors, was arrested in July and was detained overnight for participating in anti-corruption protests.
The six finalists include four debut novelists: Doshi, Cook, Stuart, and Taylor. The list omits high-profile books like “The Mirror and the Light,” the conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed Tudor trilogy. Mantel won the Booker for his two predecessors, “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies” and had received many tips for the triplet.
The winner of the Booker Prize will receive £ 50,000 (€ 55,800), with each finalist taking home £ 2,500 (€ 2,790). The result will be announced online and by radio from the Roundhouse venue in the UK capital, with virtual appearances by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and former US President Barack Obama.
Obama’s new memoir, “A Promised Land,” was released this week and sold nearly 890,000 copies in the United States and Canada in its first 24 hours.
Last year’s award was jointly won by Canadian Margaret Atwood for “The Testaments” and Britain’s Bernardine Evaristo for “Girl, Woman, Other.”
The 2020 International Booker Prize, awarded for a book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland, went to Dutch poet and writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for her novel “The Discomfort of Evening”.
