Punjab-origin Sunjeev Sahota’s political novel based on migrant workers in Sheffield involving three Indian men and one British Indian woman was among a short list of six novels for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, organisers announced on Tuesday.
Born in Derbyshire, Sahota, 34, has been included in the list for his second novel, ‘The Year of the Runways’. The short list includes Anne Tyler, winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize, for her novel, A Spool of Blue Thread.
Others in the list are: Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings), Tom McCarthy (Satin Island), Chigozie Obioma (The Fishermen) and Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life).
This is the second year that the prize has been open to writers of any nationality writing in English; it was previously open only to writers from the UK, Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe. This year’s list includes two writers from the UK, two from the US and one each from Jamaica and Nigeria. Sahota’s debut novel, ‘Ours are the Streets’, received rave reviews and won him Granta’s Best of British Novelist award for 2013.
Man Booker’s chair of judges Michael Wood said: “Only on rare occasions does celebration come so closely aligned with regret. The regret of what we left out was tempered by the enormous excitement we have in presenting the six books on the short list”.
Man Booker’s chair of judges Michael Wood said: “Only on rare occasions does celebration come so closely aligned with regret. The regret of what we left out was tempered by the enormous excitement we have in presenting the six books on the short list”.
He added: “The writers on the short list present an extraordinary range of approaches to fiction.
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The 2015 winner will be announced on October 13 in London’s Guildhall.