Man Booker Prize Shortlist Announced
American heavyweights Paul Auster and George Saunders are to go head to head for this year’s Man Booker prize, as major names make way for two new faces on the 2017 shortlist. The judges, chaired by Baroness Lola Young, announced their shortlist of six titles on Wednesday morning. Alongside Auster and Saunders, the 29-year-old British debut novelist Fiona Mozley has secured a place in the final line-up, as did American first-timer Emily Fridlund. The two debuts
are up against two previously shortlisted authors: Scottish author Ali Smith, who is in contention for a fourth time with her post-Brexit novel Autumn, and UK/Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West, in which refugees can use strange black doors to escape to other parts of the world. The most surprising omission was Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad,” which had won several prizes earlier in the year.
