Man Booker Prize longlist - 2009

This year's longlist for the Man Booker Prize was announed today. Those books which I have recommended over the last year (five of the eleven published at present) are highlighted. Summertime by Coetzee is not yet published in the UK, but appears to be an early favourite, probably based on the fact that he has won the prize twice before.. The novel which has attracted most press attention is Me Cheeta, the fictional biography of Tarzan's chimp - one that passed me by during the year!


Byatt, AS - The Children's Book, Chatto and Windus
Coetzee, JM - Summertime, Harvill Secker
Foulds, Adam - The Quickening Maze, Jonathan Cape
Hall, Sarah - How to paint a dead man, Faber and Faber
Harvey, Samantha - The Wilderness, Jonathan Cape
Lever, James - Me Cheeta, Fourth Estate
Mantel, Hilary - Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate
Mawer, Simon - The Glass Room, Little Brown
O'Loughlin, Ed - Not Untrue & Not Unkind, Penguin
Scudamore, James - Heliopolis, Harvill Secker
Toibin, Colm - Brooklyn, Viking
Trevor, William - Love and Summer,Viking
Waters, Sarah - The Little Stranger, Little Brown