The judges have announced the shortlist for the annual Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. I was a bit surprised not to see Hilary Mantel’s name on the list for her third novel in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Her first two books in the trilogy each won the Booker Prize.
I’ve only read one of the books on the list, The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, but I hope to read the others. I very much like The Shadow King and I will copy on this site the review I posted on Facebook.
The six novels are:
- Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart – a violent tale of a child growing up in 1980’s Glasgow
- Real Life by Brandon Taylor – a black, gay graduate student navigating life
- The New Wilderness by Diane Cook set in a dystopian future in which almost all of the natural world has been destroyed
- Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi about an artist’s struggles to cope with her aging mother
- The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste about Ethiopian women in the second Italo-Ethiopian War, and
- This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembgwa about a woman struggling to find employment in Zimbabwe.
I’ve very much enjoyed reading Booker Prize winners over the years and I’m looking forward to see which will be the winner this year. In any event I’m going to try to read all six of these. Let me know which you’ve read and which you’ve enjoyed.
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