2004 Man Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist for the 2004 Man Booker Prize has been announced. The judges this year considered 132 books: 115 were submitted by publishers and the judges called in another 17 - a rather high number I feel.

I've been amazed by the amount of discussion of this year's longlist in the past week or so. The British press can always be counted on to fill vast column inches with Booker-related material at this time of year as one pundit after another tries to dissect the list down to quark-level or less. And this year (for the first time?) we are being kept informed of how the rest of the world views the prize via the auspices of numerous literary weblogs. The best of these, if only because it is dedicated to the prize, is the Man Booker 2004 weblog being maintained by 3AM Magazine. They are linking off to all corners of the globe in search of material.

For the first time in many years I'm going to be out of contact with the online world when both the shortlist and winner of this year's prize are announced. Given the number of websites out there devoted to the news I doubt you will have any trouble finding out what went on. I'll update the site as soon as I can after I get back home in late October.

Author Title Publisher
Chimamanda Hgozi Adichie Purple Hibiscus 4th Estate
Nadeen Aslam Maps for Lost Lovers Faber and Faber
Nicola Barker Clear: A Transparent Novel 4th Estate
John Bemrose The Island Walkers John Murray
Ronan Bennett Havoc, in its Third Year Bloomsbury
Susanna Clarke Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Bloomsbury
Neil Cross Always the Sun Scribner
Achmat Dangor Bitter Fruit Atlantic Books
Louise Dean Becoming Strangers
Lewis Desoto A Blade of Grass Maia Press
Sara Hall The Electric Michaelangelo Faber & Faber
Justin Haythe The Honeymoon Picador
Shirley Hazzard The Great Fire Virago
Allan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty Picador
Gail Jones Sixty Lights Harvill Press
David Mitchell Cloud Atlas Sceptre
Sam North The Unnumbered Scribner
James Hamilton Paterson Cooking with Fernat Branca Faber & Faber
Nicholas Shakespeare Snowleg Harvill Press
Matt Thorne Cherry Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Colm Tóibín The Master Picador
Gerard Woodward I'll Go to Bed at Noon Chatto & Windus