The Man Booker Prize announces 2018 shortlist

The shortlist for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize has been announced. Anna Burns (Milkman, Faber & Faber), Esi Edugyan (Washington Black, Serpent’s Tail), Daisy Johnson (Everything Under, Jonathan Cape), Rachel Kushner (The Mars Room, Jonathan Cape), Richard Powers (The Overstory, William Heinemann) and Robin Robertson (The Long Take, Picador)are the six authors shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

The shortlist, which features four women and two men, covers a wide range of subjects, from an 11 year-old slave escaping a Barbados sugar plantation, to a D-Day veteran living with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Man Booker Prize is open to writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the UK and Ireland. This year’s shortlist recognises three writers from the UK, two from the US, and one from Canada.

Two novels from independent publishers, Faber & Faber and Serpent’s Tail, are shortlisted, alongside three from Penguin Random House (two from imprint Jonathan Cape and one from William Heinemann), and one from Pan Macmillan imprint Picador.

The shortlist was selected by a panel of five judges: the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (Chair); crime writer Val McDermid; cultural critic Leo Robson; feminist writer and critic Jacqueline Rose; and artist and graphic novelist Leanne Shapton.

The 2018 winner will be announced on October 16 in London’s Guildhall, at a dinner that brings together the shortlisted authors and well-known figures from the cultural world.