Justine Jordan: Each of the six shortlisted novels does something unique
Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner and Anne Michaels are among the writers whose novels have been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. The list of six includes five books by female authors, the highest number of women shortlisted in the prize's 55-year history.
Novels by Samantha Harvey, Charlotte Wood and Yael van der Wouden feature on the shortlist, which was announced at an event held at Somerset House in London on Monday evening.
Judging chair Edmund de Waal, an artist and author, said that while the shortlisted titles reveal the "fault lines of our times", they are not "books about issues".
Harvey, the only British writer to make the shortlist, was selected for Orbital, which follows six astronauts aboard the International Space Station across the course of 24 hours. Harvey "takes on the imaginative athletics of finding language for this optical feasting and metaphysical reflection" in a book that "offers vehement appreciation of the world", wrote Alexandra Harris in her Guardian review.
The winner of the prize - which honours the best work of fiction written in English by authors of any nationality and published in the UK and/or Ireland - will be announced on 12 November. They will receive £50,000, while each of the shortlisted writers receives £2,500.
Many of the shortlisted books have strong historical elements. Everett, the American author of more than 20 novels, was chosen for James, a retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.
Everett "reconceives the novel and its world, trying to reconcile the characters and the plot with what now seems obvious to us about the institution of slavery," wrote Marcel Theroux in his Guardian review of the novel. "The result is funny, entertaining and deeply thought-provoking - part critique and part celebration of the original".
The Safekeep by Van der Wouden - the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted for the Booker and the only debut novelist on this year's list - looks at the treatment of Jews in postwar Netherlands through a family drama.
Canadian poet and novelist Michaels was shortlisted for her third novel, Held. "Starting with a wounded soldier on a French battlefield, this lyrical kaleidoscope of a novel is created from the scattered images and memories of four generations of a family," read the judges' comment.
American author Kushner made the list for Creation Lake, which follows a spy tasked with infiltrating an eco-activist commune. Charlotte Wood, the first Australian author to be shortlisted in a decade, was chosen for Stone Yard Devotional, about a woman who leaves Sydney for a religious community in the Australian outback.
Alongside De Waal on this year's judging panel are novelists Sara Collins and Yiyun Li, Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, and musician Nitin Sawhney.
Judges said it was a "genuine surprise" to find that their list featured five women. "We came up with a shortlist, we sat back and looked at the pile and someone said 'there are five women there'," said Collins. It was "such a gratifying, surprising, thrilling" moment, "especially coming off the back of the year of the three Pauls - it's time for the Paulettes and Paulinas", added Collins, referring to last year's shortlist, which featured Paul Murray, Paul Harding and Paul Lynch. Lynch went on to win the prize with his novel Prophet Song, set in an imagined Ireland descending into tyranny.
"Publishing is dominated at certain levels by women, but the literary recognition has still seemed to be reserved for men," said Collins. "Real heavyweight writers" such as Wood, Harvey and Michaels are "perhaps undersung" in terms of the "massive commercial success that they should have had".
The six books were chosen from a longlist of 13, which also featured My Friends by Hisham Matar, Wild Houses by Colin Barrett, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange, Enlightenment by Sarah Perry and Playground by Richard Powers. The longlist was chosen from 156 books published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024.
Judges said that their meeting to decide the shortlist lasted three-and-a-half hours. "There was some fierce advocacy for books that we had to leave behind," said Collins.
Along with Lynch, recent winners of the Booker prize include Shehan Karunatilaka, Damon Galgut, Douglas Stuart, along with Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, who co-won the prize in 2019.
