Booker Prize 2020 longlist announced
28 July 2020
The longlist, or 'The Booker Dozen', for The 2020 Booker Prize
was announced on Tuesday 28 July 2020. Huge
congratulations in particular to Glaswegian Douglas
Stuart for Shuggie Bain published
by Picador and to Maaza
Mengiste for The Shadow King published by
Canongate Books based in Edinburgh.
This year's longlist of 13 books was selected by a panel of five
judges: Margaret Busby (chair), editor, literary critic and former
publisher; Lee Child, author; Sameer Rahim, author and critic; Lemn
Sissay, writer and broadcaster; and Emily Wilson, classicist and
translator.
The list was chosen from 162 novels published in the UK or
Ireland between 1 October 2019 and 30 September 2020.
The Booker Prize for Fiction is open to writers of any
nationality, writing in English and published in the UK or
Ireland.
The 2020 longlist, or 'The Booker Dozen', of 13 novels, is:
- Diane Cook (USA) - The New Wilderness (Oneworld
Publications)
- Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe) - This Mournable Body
(Faber & Faber)
- Avni Doshi (USA) - Burnt Sugar (Hamish Hamilton,
Penguin Random House)
- Gabriel Krauze (UK) - Who They Was (4th Estate,
HarperCollins)
- Hilary Mantel (UK) - The Mirror & The Light (4th
Estate, HarperCollins)
- Colum McCann (Ireland/USA) - Apeirogon (Bloomsbury
Publishing)
- Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia/USA) - The Shadow King
(Canongate Books)
- Kiley Reid (USA) - Such a Fun Age (Bloomsbury Circus,
Bloomsbury Publishing)
- Brandon Taylor (USA) - Real Life (Originals, Daunt
Books Publishing)
- Anne Tyler (USA) - Redhead by The Side of The Road
(Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
- Douglas Stuart (Scotland/USA) - Shuggie Bain (Picador,
Pan Macmillan)
- Sophie Ward (UK) - Love and Other Thought Experiments
(Corsair, Little, Brown)
- C Pam Zhang (USA) - How Much of These Hills is Gold
(Virago, Little, Brown)
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday 15
September. The 2020 winner will be announced in November. The
winner of the 2020 Booker Prize receives £50,000 and can expect
international recognition. The shortlisted authors each receive
£2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
For some comments on the list, see eg: