The list was announced by jury chair K Satchidanandan and comprises four debut novels, two works in translation from Hindi, and authors and translators from across India, Australia, the UK, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Pakistani fiction, which was conspicuous by its absence in the prize last year, makes a comeback with four titles.
The longlist for the USD 50,000 award was chosen from 81 entries which were reviewed by a five-member jury comprising Muneeza Shamsie, Rick Simonson, Suvani Singh and Eleanor O'Keeffe besides Satchidanandan.
The shortlist will be announced on November 20 in London and the winner will be declared at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival in January.
The prominent Indian authors in the longlist are Ghosh ("River of Smoke"), Thayil ("Narcopolis"), Jerry Pinto ("Em and the Big Hoom") and Rahul Bhattacharya ("The Sly Company of People Who Care").
The Pakistani authors are Mohammed Hanif ("Our Lady of Alice Bhatti"), Jamil Ahmad ("The Wandering Falcon"), Roopa Farooki ("The Flying Man") and Musharraf Ali Farooqi ("Between Clay and Dust"). Tahmima Anam ("The Good Muslim") is the sole Bangladeshi writer in the list.
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UK-born Niven Govinden ("Black Bread White Beer"), Sunetra Gupta ("So Good in Black"), Uday Prakash ("The Walls of Delhi"), Anuradha Roy ("The Folded Earth"), Saswati Sengupta ("The Song Seekers"), Geetanjali Shree ("The Empty Space" and Alice Albinia ("Leela's Book") complete the list.
Commenting on the longlist, Satchidanandan said, "The values we were looking for in the works were many - novelty of theme, freshness of the narrative strategies used as well as the idiom, the contribution the work makes to the genre of the novel in general.
"And we found several works which had one or all of these qualities. They were charmingly diverse in their theme and treatment and well aware of the political, cultural and psychological dimensions of life in the societies and people they were dealing with, making our reading a rich, educative as well as aesthetic experience." (MORE)