Indian-origin writer’s novel among 6 books shortlisted for Booker Prize
LONDON: Burnt Sugar, Indianorigin writer Avni Doshi’s debut novel about love between mother and daughter, is among six books shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction, organisers announced on Tuesday. The winner will be announced on November 17.
The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will receive a further £50,000. The shortlist was selected from 162 submitted books published in the UK or Ireland
between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020.
A notable omission in the shortlist is the previous Booker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel, whose third novel in the Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror & The Light, was in the long list.
US-born and UK-educated Doshi’s novel has received rave reviews.
Margaret Busby, chair of the 2020 judges, said, “The shortlist of six came together unexpectedly, voices and characters resonating with us all even when very different. We are delighted to help disseminate these chronicles of creative humanity to a global audience.
“The novels... range in setting from an unusual child growing up in working-class Glasgow in the 1980s, to a woman coping with a post-colonial nightmare in Zimbabwe.”
Busby continued, “Along the way, we meet a man struggling with racism on a university campus, join a trek in the wilderness after an environmental disaster, eavesdrop on a woman coping with her ageing mother as they travel across India and in an exploration of female power discover how ordinary people rose up in 1930s Ethiopia to defend their country against invading
Italians.”
Gaby Wood of the Booker Prize Foundation said, “Every year, judging the Booker Prize is an act of discovery. What’s out there, how can we widen the net, how do these books seem when compared to one another, how do they fare when re-read? These are questions judges always ask themselves.”
The others who made it to the shortlist are Diane Cook for The New Wilderness; Tsitsi Dangarembga for This Mournable Body; Maaza Mengiste for The Shadow King; Douglas Stuart for Shuggie Bain; and Brandon Taylor for Real Life.