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The Man Booker Prize 2015 shortlist – see the six books
For thrills: there is Jamaican author, Marlon James. James has written a high-octane novel A Brief History of Seven Killings that uses the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley as a leaping-off point. Irvine Welsh has called it: 'A vivid plunge into a crazed, violent and corrupt world, told through multiple narrators and executed with swaggering aplomb... the most original novel I’ve read in years.'
For tragedy: Hanya Yangihara has captured the darker side of success in A Little Life. Jude is a boy, abandoned and abused, who goes on to become one of New York’s top lawyers. "A Little Life" feels elemental, irreducible-and, dark and disturbing though it is, there is beauty in it’ The New Yorker.
For UK topical: there is a heart-breaking look at immigration in Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of The Runaways. It tells the story of a group of Indian men who arrive in damp, cold Sheffield in search of a better life. “Novels of such scope and invention are all too rare” The Spectator
For the astonishing debut: The Fisherman, Chigozie Obioma ‘s first novel, tells what has been called a Cain and Abel-esque tale of childhood in Nigeria. The Guardian calls it “an elegy to lost promise… and yet it remains hopeful about the redemptive possibilities of a new generation.”
For the previous nominee: Tom McCarthy is an inspiring, and divisive, figure and his newest book, Satin Island, seeks to find meaning in our mad, modern times. “Few other writers goad us into asking such broad, terrifying questions as, What should fiction do? Who is it for?” The Paris Review
And for the established author: Anne Tyler was first published in 1964, at the age of 23, and has since gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In the tender and satirical A Spool of Blue Thread, The Telegraph says: “she gives a better sense than almost anyone else of what it’s like to be part of a family.”
So…Who are you going to go for? Is there anyone you think that has been missed? We would love to read your comments.
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