Rushdie listed for award
SIR Salman Rushdie is up for the Booker Prize almost 40 years after he won it with Midnight’s Children.
The 72-year-old British author is longlisted for Quichotte, described by judges as a “picaresque tour-de-force of contemporary America, with all its alarms and craziness”.
The soon-to-be-published novel deals with “father-son relationships, sibling quarrels, racism, the opioid crisis, cyber-spies, and the end of the world”.
It is the first time the British author, who famously lived under a fatwa following the publication of The Satanic Verses, has been longlisted for the £50,000 prize since 2008, when The Enchantress Of Florence was in the running.
Sir Salman won the gong in 1981 for Midnight’s Children, and later the Best Of The Booker to mark the 40th anniversary of the award.
Another former winner, Canadian author Margaret Atwood, is longlisted for The Testaments, set 15 years after Offred’s final scene in The Handmaid’s Tale, and described by judges as “terrifying and exhilarating”.
Atwood, 79, won the 2000 Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin and has been shortlisted several times.
The longlist features one debut novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer, a “funny, tragic and wildly entertaining book” by 31-year-old Oyinkan Braithwaite, about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a habit of killing her boyfriends.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit author Jeanette Winterson is longlisted for Frankissstein, which explores gender identity and the consequences of artificial intelligence.
Other novels include Night Boat To Tangier, a crime story by Irish author Kevin Barry, described as “drenched in sex, death and narcotics”.
Chairman of the 2019 judges Peter Florence said the longlisted novels were “all credible winners”.