2007 Man Booker Prize Longlist

" ...Set between London and St. Petersburg, "Self Help" is the absorbing story of a family - half-English, half-Russian - with many secrets and a dark, disturbed history. Masha Glover returns home from exile, where she dies suddenly and alone. Her twins, Gabriel and Isabella, must come together and confront the contorted legacy of the past in the shape of their estranged, malevolent father, Nicholas, and the pitiless stranger, Arkady Artamenkov. ..."

This novel has been praised by both the Sunday Times and the Financial Times.

This is the first time that Edward Docx has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

"Penang, 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic Endo is bound by disciplines of his own and when the Japanese invade Malaya, threatening to destroy Philip's family and everything he loves, he realises that his trusted sensei - to whom he owes absolute loyalty - has been harbouring a devastating secret. Philip must risk everything in an attempt to save those he has placed in mortal danger and discover who and what he really is."

The Gift of Rain is Tan Twan Eng's first novel.

This tale of a clan of nine Irish siblings gathering for the wake of their brother Liam has been praised by just about every newspaper that exists.  It has been hailed as a fresh twist on the traditional Irish novel.

This is the first time that Anne Enright has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the story of Changez, a Pakistani immigrant living in New York City.  He is thriving in his new life, until the events of September 11th, 2001 threaten the fragile framework on which he has built his new life.

This is the first time that Mohsin Hamid has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

The Welsh Girl has racked up praise from revered authors such as David Mitchell, Claire Messud, and Lionel Shriver.  It is set during World War II in Wales, when the lives of three very different people converge - a German Jewish refugee sent to interrogate Rudolf Hess, a young and impressionable Welsh barmaid, and a German POW.  It is through these people and their experiences that Davies' explores the pull and strain of nationality and loyalty. 

The TurboBookSnob was impressed with this novel, and will be interested to find out whether or not it will make the shortlist.

This is Peter Ho Davies' first novel, although he was named as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2003, on the strength of the short stories that he has published.

"It is Bougainville in 1991 - a small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda's last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts' inspiring reading of "Great Expectations". But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns..."

This novel seemed to capture the imagination of quite a few bloggers over the past month, who asserted that this should be considered for the Booker this year.

This the first time that Lloyd Jones has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

Gifted is another novel that seems to have garnered praise from all of the major newspapers and publications, and has been endorsed by Booker Shortlisted author Gerard Woodward.

"Numbers have filled Rumi Vasi's world since she first learned to count. But it was on a trip to India at the age of 8 that her mathematical powers acquired their almost supernatural significance. When she returned home to Cardiff her destiny was sealed: she was now, and would forever be, the town's 'maths prodigy'. At 14 Rumi is firmly set on the path of a gifted child, speeding headlong towards Oxford University. As her father sees it, discipline is everything if the family has any hope of making its mark on its adoptive country. However, as Rumi gets older and the family's stark isolation intensifies, numbers start to lose their magic for the young teenager: she abandons the rigid timetable of her afternoons to seek out friendship and replaces equations with rampant spice abuse. As her longing for love and her parents' will to succeed deepen so too does the rift between generations."

This is Nikita Lalwani's first novel.

This novel is set in 1962 on the Dorset Coast, following the marriage of Edward and Florence.  As Edward and Florence deal with their apprehensions about their wedding night, the story flashes back in time to their initial meeting and courtship, and ultimately examines how a life can be irrevocably altered in an instant.

The TurboBookSnob wasn't certain that the judges would include this novel.  On the one hand, it is by one of the most esteemed writers today, one who is certainly destined for a Nobel Prize soon.  It is also, however, more of a novella than a novel, and novellas are not eligible for the Booker Prize.  The writing is crystalline and precise, and it is evident that McEwan is a master at his craft, however the ending is problematic and feels as if McEwan randomly decided one day to wrap the whole thing up with a neat little bow in a few pages.

Ian McEwan won the Booker Prize in 1998 for Amsterdam, and was shortlisted in 2001 for Atonement, in 1992 for Black Dogs, and in 1981 for The Comfort of Strangers.  He was also longlisted in 2005 for his novel Saturday.

"It is the 1980s, and Kate Meaney is a serious-minded and curious young girl - who spends her time with her toy monkey acting out the role of a junior detective. She notes goings-on at the Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, particularly the newsagent's where she is friends with the owner's son Adrian. When she disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded by the press. It's 2004 and thirty-something Lisa is at work in a cut-price record store, tearing her hair out at customers' bizarre requests and the even more bizarre behaviour of her colleagues. While at home, the futility of her relationship is slowly becoming apparent. Over shared fishpaste sandwiches, she strikes up a friendship with security guard Kurt - and, following CCTV glimpses of Kate, they become entranced by the lost little girl and her connections with the strange history of Green Oaks itself."

What Was Lost is Catherine O'Flynn's first novel.  Tindal Street Press is a small independent publishing house located in Birmingham.  This the second book they have published to be nominated for a Booker Prize (the first book was Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall, which was shortlisted in 2003).  What Was Lost was longlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for fiction.

"As he slips beneath the waves of Toronto's harbour, Professor David Hollis follows in death the man he pursued in the last months of his life, English apothecary J. G. Hallam. One hundred and fifty years earlier, Hallam had been sent by his father to open a shop in the New World, but when that business failed, he became a reluctant partner in a photography firm. In 1856, the company was offered the opportunity to work for the municipal government, and the bleak and ungainly young city took shape before Hallam's lens. But after presenting the photographs in England, Hallam's ship sank in a violent storm on Lake Ontario and the strongbox holding the photographs was lost. The shoreline of the harbour has shifted dramatically over a century and a half, and David Hollis, driven in his pursuit of this important historical record, speculates that the sunken ship containing the photographs is in the landfill where the city's new Union Arena is to be built. With almost no one on his side but his daughter's fiance, John Lewis, Hallam presents his findings, which are met with howls of derision from his colleagues. Three months later, he's dead, and Lewis joins the grieving widow, Marianne, in a furtive, unsettling quest to vindicate her husband. Installed in a hotel overlooking the excavation site where the arena is to stand, they await the moment when a piece of the past reappears that might alleviate the anguish of these civic and private vanishings..."

This is the first time that Michael Redhill has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

"'I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being...' Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, the catastrophic result of what happened on That Night when, thanks to an American chemical company, the Apocalypse visited his slum. Now not quite twenty, he leads a hand-to-mouth existence with his dog Jara and a crazy old nun called Ma Franci, and spends his nights fantasizing about Nisha, the daughter of a local musician, and wondering what it must be like to get laid. When a young American doctor, Elli Barber, comes to town to open a free clinic for the still suffering townsfolk - only to find herself struggling to convince them that she isn't there to do the dirty work of the 'Kampani' - Animal plunges into a web of intrigues, scams and plots with the unabashed aim of turning events to his own advantage..."

This is the first time that Indra Sinha has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

"Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, liked to say that if Hitler had had a friend, he would have been that friend. But Hitler did have a friend. She was Winifred Wagner, (1897-1980) the English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, and married to the middle-aged (and incidentally, homosexual) son of Germany's most controversial genius, Richard Wagner. In this novel, A. N. Wilson will try to come to grips with the one area of life where Hitler seems like an imaginable human being, that is in his response to art, and above all to opera. Like his friend Winnie, he was an outsider. Like her, he was haunted by the great Wagnerian themes. Both had known the humiliations of poverty. Both felt angry and excluded from society. Both found in one another an extraordinary kinship."

A.N. Wilson appeared on Granta's first list of Best Young British Novelists in 1983, and although he has published many novels since then, they have not attracted the attention of the Booker judges until now.  He was even a prize judge in 1996, when Last Orders by Graham Swift won.