The Booker Prize longlist for 2023 was announced on Tuesday, featuring 10 authors who have never before been in the running for the award.
The list of 13 entries for the £50,000 prize includes four debut novelists and six others who have not previously been listed.
They join established literary talents Sebastian Barry, Tan Twan Eng and Paul Murray — who have seven previous Booker nominations between them. Barry and Murray are joined by two other writers from Ireland — Elaine Feeney and Paul Lynch — meaning there are four Irish stars on the longlist for the first time.
Many in the literary world will be surprised that fellow Irish writer Megan Nolan’s widely-lauded Ordinary Human Failings missed out.
Including the four on the 2023 longlist, a total of 37 Irish writers have been recognised by the Booker during the prize’s history, meaning Ireland has produced the most writers relative to its size.
Barry, nominated for Old God’s Time, and Murray, on the list for The Bee Sting, are among the favourites to win the prize, with Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, nominated for his new novel The House of Doors, also seen as a strong contender.
The Booker Prize is open to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland and the longlist is rounded out by Nigerian author Ayòbámi Adébáyò, Canadian Sarah Bernstein, American writers Jonathan Escoffery and Paul Harding, and four British authors — Siân Hughes, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, Martin MacInnes and Chetna Maroo.
The 2023 judging panel is chaired by twice-shortlisted novelist Esi Edugyan.
She is joined by Bridgerton actress Adjoa Andoh and Peep Show actor Robert Webb, as well as criticâ¯Mary Jean Chan and Professor James Shapiro.â¯
Ms Edugyan said: “The list is defined by its freshness — by the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones. All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways.
“Their range is vast... they shocked us, made us laugh, filled us with anguish, but above all they stayed with us... this is a list to bring wonder.”
In 2022, Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.
