Man Booker Prize announces 2017 shortlist

Paul Auster, Emily Fridlund, Mohsin Hamid, Fiona Mozley, George Saunders and Ali Smith are the six shortlisted authors for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The judges remarked that the novels, each in its own way, challenge and subtly shift our preconceptions — about the nature of love, about the experience of time, about questions of identity and even death.

The shortlist, which features three women and three men, covers a wide range of subjects, from the struggle of a family trying to retain its self-sufficiency in rural England to a love story between two refugees seeking to flee an unnamed city in the throes of civil war.

In the fourth year that the prize has been open to writers of any nationality, the shortlist is made up of two British, one British-Pakistani and three American writers.

The 2017 shortlist of six novels include 4321 by Paul Auster (US) (Faber & Faber); History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (US) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (UK-Pakistan) (Hamish Hamilton); Elmet by Fiona Mozley (UK) (JM Originals); Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (US) (Bloomsbury Publishing) and Autumn by Ali Smith (UK) (Hamish Hamilton).