Booker Prize organisers announced the shortlist for the 2024 edition on Tuesday at the Portico Rooms at Somerset House in London.
The shortlist includes five women and one man, making it the largest number of women shortlisted in its 55-year history.
Authors from five countries were shortlisted, along with the first Dutch writer and the first Australian author in a decade. Others include the first Australian in 10 years and British, Canadian and American authors. Two of the authors had already been shortlisted previously.
The Booker Prize aims to encourage the publication and reading of quality imaginative works throughout the world and to more fully recognise the role of translators.
The contribution of both author and translator receives equal recognition, including a cash prize of £50,000, split between them, and the iconic Iris Trophy, named after renowned author Iris Murdoch.
In addition, each shortlisted author will receive: £2,500 and a custom-bound edition of their book.
While no Nigerians made the long and shortlist this year, several Nigerian writers have been in the running for the Booker Prize in the past, including winners and runners-up. Chinua Achebe won in 2007, Ben Okri in 1991, and Bernardine Evaristo, a British-Nigerian author, won the Booker Prize in 2019, sharing the prize with a Canadian novelist and poet, Margaret Atwood. Ayobami Adebayo was shortlisted in 2023 and Chigozie Obioma in 2015 and 2019.
Article page with promotion of financial support The books shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize[Photo credit: The Booker Prize]
The shortlisted works
The 2024 jury selected six books from 156 works published between October 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024.
The panel is chaired by artist and author Edmund de Waal, award-winning novelist Sara Collins; Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan; world-renowned writer and teacher Yiyun Li; and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.
The shortlisted works are James by Percival Everett, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Held by Anne Michaels, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
The 2024 International Booker Prize is a literary prize for the best novel in the English language published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024 in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
The prize has been awarded annually since 1969 for the best novel written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland.
The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize will be announced at a ceremony on 12 November at Old Billingsgate in London and will be broadcast on a special edition of BBC Radio 4's Front Row at 9.30pm.