LONDON (AP) — Six American writers including Rachel Kushner, Percival Everett and Tommy Orange are among 13 semifinalists announced Tuesday for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Cheyenne and Arapaho author Orange is the first Native American Booker semifinalist for the 50,000 pound ($64,000) award with his centuries-spanning saga “Wandering Stars.â€
Everett is nominated for “James,†which reimagines Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn†from the point of view of its main Black character, the enslaved man Jim.
Everett was a finalist for the 2022 Booker for “The Trees.†Kushner, who was a Booker finalist in 2018 for her bestseller “The Mars Room,†is a contender again with spy story “Creation Lake.†Pulitzer-winner Richard Powers, a finalist in both 2018 and 2021, is on the longlist with “Playground,†a story of money, power and climate change set on a Polynesian island.
The other U.S. contenders are Rita Bullwinkel for “Headshot,†and ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø-American writer Claire Messud for “This Strange Eventful History.â€
Writers from the U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia and the Netherlands round out the list, which includes “Held†by ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø poet and novelist Anne Michaels, “My Friends†by British-Libyan author Hisham Matar and “The Safekeep†by Yael van der Wouden, the first-ever Dutch Booker semifinalist.
Artist and writer Edmund de Waal, who is chairing the five-member judging panel, said the list included “books that navigate what it means to belong, to be displaced and to return,†with settings ranging from a small Irish town to a convent in Australia and from deep oceans to outer space.
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers and is open to novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland. Last year’s winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch for post-democratic dystopia “Prophet Song.â€
A list of six finalists will be announced on Sept. 16, and this year’s winner will be announced Nov. 12 at a ceremony in London.
