NoViolet Bulawayo makes history

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We need new Names author NoViolet Bulawayo is one of the six authors selected for the 2013 Man Booker prize.

LONDON — We need new Names author NoViolet Bulawayo is one of the six authors selected for the 2013 Man Booker prize.

Reuters

Six tales from goldrush New Zealand to Zimbabwe to the English countryside and elsewhere on the planet were shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker prize, organisers said yesterday.

Two-time Booker nominee and Irish writer Colm Toibin headed a list which also included English writer Jim Crace, Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo, New Zealander Eleanor Catton, Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri and Canada’s Ruth Ozeki.

“Global in its reach, this exceptional shortlist demonstrates the vitality and range of the contemporary novel at its finest,” judging panel chair Robert Macfarlane said.

It is the first time each of the four female writers have been nominated for the prize.

They count among them a Buddhist priest (Ozeki), a member of US President Barack Obama’s committee on the arts and humanities (Lahiri) and the first Zimbabwean writer to make the shortlist (Bulawayo).

Eleanor Catton, who will be 28 at the time of the winner announcement, is the youngest on the shortlist. Winner announcement Macfarlane, an academic, writer and critic said at the Press conference to announce the shortlist that the judging panel searched carefully to find originality.

“We looked hard, it took a long time. It was effortful but we found it,” he said. The winner of the $78 600 Man Booker prize will be announced on October 15.

Hilary Mantel wrote herself into the history books last year, becoming the first woman and first Briton to win the coveted Man Booker prize for fiction twice with Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to her acclaimed Wolf Hall.