Heavyweights duel with debutants for top prize

■ Two first-time female writers Emily, Fiona on shortlist

London: Two first-time female authors feature on the 2017 Man Booker Prize fiction shortlist which comprises three women and three men including best-selling US writer Paul Auster.

Subjects this year range from the struggle of a family trying to retain its selfsufficiency in rural England to a love story between two refugees fleeing civil war.

In the fourth year that the £50,000 ($66,400) prize has been open to writers of any nationality, the shortlist is made up of two British, one British-Pakistani and three American writers.

Auster’s 4321 offers four versions of one young man’s life while fellow U.S. author Emily Fridlund’s debut novel History of Wolves is a coming-of-age tale of a teenage girl seeking a place to belong.

Elmet, the first book by British author Fiona Mozley, tells the story of a father and his two children who clash with landowners after they build a home for themselves.

UK/Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid is on the list with Exit West in which refugees can use doors to escape to other parts of the world.

George Saunders’ first novel Lincoln in the Bardo, is about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the American Civil War.

Scottish writer Ali Smith is on the shortlist for the fourth time, this year with Autumn, a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive.

Meanwhile, Arundhati Roy, failed to make the cut. Roy, who won the literary award worth 50,000 pounds for her debut book 'The God of Small Things' in 1997, had featured on the long-list for her latest novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

The book was described as “a rich and vital book” that “comes from the bowels of India” by the judges.

The Man Booker Prize is awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language and published in the UK.

The winner will be announced on October 17 in London’s Guildhall.