Booker Prize 2012 Longlist

Art & Culture

The 2012 Man Booker prize longlist was announced last week and there has been much talk about debut novelists being preferred to the ‘old guard’. Zadie Smith, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan were all given the cold shoulder in favour of Sam Thompson, Alison Moore and Jeet Thayil (who? exactly!).

Last year there was a great brouhaha about the books being chosen for their ‘readability’, this year it’s about books that are of high quality and that you will want to read again and again.

Of course there are some well known writers like Will Self and the favourite, Hilary Mantel, but all in all it’s a fairly unknown list, I think. What I am particularly pleased about is the strong presence of indie publishers (outlined below).

Not sure if I’ll get round to reading many of these books as I’ll be quite busy in the coming months but ‘Nacropolis’, ‘Communion Town’ and ‘Umbrella’ sound very interesting to me.

Anybody planning on reading the entire longlist or will you wait for the shortlist? Anyone tempted by a flutter on who will win it this year?

The 2012 Man Booker prize longlist – indie publishers:

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon Books / @myrmidonbooks)

Skios by Michael Frayn (Faber & Faber / @faberbooks)

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (And Other Stories / @andothertweets)

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt / @saltpublishing)

Umbrella by Will Self (Bloomsbury / @bloomsburybooks)

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (Faber & Faber / @faberbooks)

The rest:

The Yips by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)

Philida by André Brink (Harvill Secker)