Jamaican author makes Man Booker long list with Bob Marley novel
LONDON, ( Reuters) - The long list of 13 titles for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for fiction written in English, published yesterday, features the first Jamaican author in contention for the 50,000pound ($78,000) prize.
Marlon James is nominated for his third novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” the story of the attempted assassination of reggae singer Bob Marley and its aftermath in the Jamaica of the 1970s and early 80s.
Also in contention are 2007 winner Anne Enright and writers from Nigeria, India, New Zealand, Ireland, the U. S. and Britain.
The list will be whittled down to six on Sept. 15 and the winner will be announced on Oct. 13 in London’s Guildhall.
First awarded in 1969, the prize’s list of previous winners features many of the literary giants of the last four decades, from Salman Rushdie Hilary Mantel to Murdoch and McEwan.
The rules of the prize changed in 2013 to open it to writers beyond Britain and the Commonwealth.
Last year’s winning novel, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” by Richard Flanagan, sold almost 800,000 copies worldwide.
After considering 156 books for this year’s prize, the five judges chose the following 13 novels for the 2015 long list: and Iris Ian BOGOTA, ( Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Peruvian special forces rescued 26 children and 13 women, some of whom had been raped and held captive for three decades, when they raided a southeastern jungle camp of the left- wing Shining Path rebel group.
“Many of these children were born there and are the result of rapes carried out on women by members of the Shining Path,” Vice Defence Minister Ivan Vega told local reporters earlier this week.
It was the largest number of children rescued from the rebels in a single operation, he added.
The almost defunct Shining Path has not posed a threat to the stability of the government for years, but rebel bands remain active in cocaine-producing areas and occasionally ambush security forces in jungle valleys.
The children rescued in the July 23 raid were aged between one and 14, and some were born and grew up in the jungle camp in the VRAEM region, which takes in the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valleys, local media reported.
Numerous fields of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, fill the region’s verdant mountain slopes and valleys, a 20hour drive from the capital Lima, making Peru one of the world’s largest cocaine producers.