The 2008 Man Booker Prize

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The 2008 Man Booker Prize season is shaping up to be an interesting year. There are a number promising books by established and new authors. In addition, this is the first year that the longlist will be published in July. This certainly makes it tricky to make longlist predictions, when many publishers still deem August and September as the months to publish their literary gems. The TurboBookSnob wonders, if in the future, the earlier longlist date will drive changes in publication dates of literary novels.

Here is an overview of some of the potential contenders for this year's Man Booker Prize.

Man Booker Prize Winners:

Four former prize winners have published books within the qualifying dates. Peter Carey's His Illegal Self is perhaps the author's best work since Oscar and Lucinda. Salman Rushdie delivers a gloriously written love story in The Enchantress of Florence. James Kelman has written the magnificent Kieron Smith, Boy. Stanley Middleton publishes Her Three Wise Men in August.

Man Booker Prize Shortlisted Authors:

There are a number of shortlisted authors with books out this year:

• The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd
• The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
• The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
• The Impostor by Damon Galgut
• The Bottles by Sarah Hall
• The Believers by Zoe Heller
• Foolish Mortals by Jennifer Johnston
• Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing
• Deaf Sentence by David Lodge
• The Right Hand of the Sun by Anita Mason
• One Morning Like a Bird by Andrew Miller
• The Language of Others by Clare Morrall
• Dreams of Rivers and Seas by Tim Parks
• Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis by Ali Smith
• Breath by Tim Winton

Man Booker Prize Longlisted Authors:

There are also a number of longlisted authors with books out this year:

• When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
• Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot
• Scapegallows by Carol Birch
• Remember Me by Melvyn Bragg
• In Zodiac Light by Robert Edric
• The Clothes Off Their Backs by Linda Grant
• The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
• Slam by Nick Hornby
• We Are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek
• Out of Breath by Julie Myerson
• The Butt by Will Self
• The Age of Shiva: A Novel by Manil Suri

First Novels :

The following list contains some of the promising debuts in literary fiction this year:

• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• Submarine by Joe Dunthorne
• A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
• The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
• Blackmoor by Edward Hogan
• The Outcast by Sadie Jones
• The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Lauren Liebenberg
• Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan
• The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling
• Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
• The Road from Damascus by Robin Yassin-Kassab

Blurring the Lines:

Several books this year blur the lines of "traditional" fiction, including:

• Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing, which combines a fictional story of Lessing's parents with a true account of their lives.
• Old Men in Love by Alasdair Gray, which is composed in part of the posthumous papers of an old Glaswegian schoolmaster.
• Miss Herbert by Adam Thirlwell, which is described as an "inside-out novel," and is made up of "maps, illustrations, and a variety of helpful diagrams."

Husband and Wife:

It is theoretically possible this year to have a husband and wife on the longlist.  Martin Amis will be publishing his new novel, The Pregnant Widow, in September, and in May, his wife, Isabel Fonesca, published her debut novel, Attachment.

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Send TurboBookSnob Your Ideal Longlist

Which books would you have included on this year's longlist? Which books on this year's list would you have omitted?

Send an e-mail message to wendy@turbobooksnob.com , telling the TurboBookSnob which 12 books you would have chosen, and any other thoughts you have on this year's prize, and she will post them on this page throughout the coming month.

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BabyBookSnob

Ender, the TurboBookSnob's son, has been growing up a lot since last year's Booker season!  He has developed a love of books himself, and loves to take the TurboBookSnob's books off of her shelves and peruse them, even though they are lacking pictures!
Ender even has his own LibraryThing page - BabyBookSnob!  He seems to have developed an affinity for all things Dr. Seuss and Eric Carle!

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What is the Man Booker Prize?

The Booker Prize, or the Man Booker Prize as it has been known since 2002, was created in 1969, and has grown over the years to become the most prestigious prize awarded for literature in the English language.

The Booker Prize is awarded each year to the best full-length novel written in the English language by a citizen of Great Britain, the Commonwealth, Eire, Pakistan, or South Africa. Booker Prize winners have achieved remarkable critical acclaim, sold a record-breaking number of copies (Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally has sold over 2 million copies since it won the prize in 1982), and have been transformed into many well-regarded films.

Throughout the 35 years that the Booker has been in existence, it has changed its name, undergone changes in the governing rules, raised eyebrows with its scandals, drawn press attention as literary heavyweights jabbed at each other, and been accused of touting literary elitism instead of promoting books that people off the street would feel compelled to buy. In spite of all this, and quite possibly because of it, the Booker Prize has emerged as the premier literary prize, not just in the English language, but in the world.

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