No Indian author figures among the 13 writers longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize announced today with celebrated South African novelist J M Coetzee, who won the prestigious prize twice, in the running again for his book 'The Schooldays of Jesus'.
Coetzee is pitted alongside well known writers such as Deborah Levy ('Hot Milk'), A L Kennedy ('Serious Sweet') and Elizabeth Strout ('My Name Is Lucy Barton') for the prize.
Jamaican author Marlon James won the prize last year.
Six of the longlisted titles are by women and seven by men, with four American writers and seven British.
Chair of the judges Amanda Foreman called the longlist as one "to be relished."
"From the historical to the contemporary, the satirical to the polemical, the novels in this list come from both established writers and new voices. The writing is uniformly fresh, energetic and important. It is a longlist to be relished," she said.
Terming the quality of books under consideration as extremely high, she said, "Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be."
Coetzee won the Booker Prize in 1983 with 'Life & Times of Michael K'and then again with'Disgrace'in 1999, making him the first writer to win the prize twice.
Levy was shortlisted for the prize in 2012 for'Swimming Home' and Kennedy was a judge for the prize in 1996, the year Graham Swift won with'Last Orders'.
Others in the longlist include Macrae Burnet (His Bloody Project), Ian McGuire (The North Water), David Means (US)- (Hystopia), Wyl Menmuir (The Many), Ottessa Moshfegh (Eileen), Virginia Reeves (Work Like Any Other), Elizabeth Strout (My Name Is Lucy Barton), David Szalay (All That Man Is), Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say We Have Nothing).
The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 13 and the final winner will be announced on October 25.
All shortlisted authors is set receive 2,500 pounds each and a specially bound edition of their book.
