Australian authors Christos Tsiolkas and Peter Carey are on the longlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.
The longlist of 13 titles, announced overnight in the UK, includes Tsiolkas’ The Slap (A&U) and Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America (Hamish Hamilton).
The full longlist, chosen from a total of 138 books (14 of which were called in by the prize judges), is:
* Parrot and Olivier in America (Peter Carey, Hamish Hamilton)
* Room (Emma Donoghue, Picador)
* The Betrayal (Helen Dunmore, Fig Tree)
* In a Strange Room (Damon Galgut, Atlantic Books)
* The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobson, Bloomsbury)
* The Long Song (Andrea Levy, Headline)
* C (Tom McCarthy, Jonathan Cape)
* The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (David Mitchell, Sceptre)
* February (Lisa Moore, Random House)
* Skippy Dies (Paul Murray, Hamish Hamilton)
* Trespass (Rose Tremain, Chatto & Windus)
* The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas, A&U)
* The Stars in the Bright Sky (Alan Warner, Jonathan Cape).
Carey has won the prize twice already, for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001. He was also longlisted for Theft in 2006 and shortlisted for Illywhacker in 1985.
Tsiolkas’ publisher at Allen & Unwin, Jane Palfreyman, told the Weekly Book Newsletter that The Slap being longlisted for the prize was ‘almost impossibly perfect’.
‘Sales of the trade paperback edition here are still incredibly strong but I’m sure this news will spike sales again and boost further interest in rights,’ she said. ‘We just made a really good Italian sale last week to Neri Pozza and I’m sure more territories will come on board now to join the fourteen territories who’ve already bought rights to The Slap.’
‘The book has had brilliant reviews and sales in Canada and the US and is now a critical success and runaway bestseller in the UK,’ said Palfreyman. ‘We couldn’t be more thrilled for Christos, nor more proud of his remarkable achievements.’
The chair of judges Andrew Motion said the longlist consisted of ‘thirteen exceptional novels–books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors’.
‘Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain.’
The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September in London and the winner of the £50,000 (A$87,000) prize will be announced on Tuesday 12 October.
Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/07/16782/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced under licence from Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2010, Thorpe-Bowker.