Blitz Bureau
LONDON: American writers Percival Everett and Rachel Kushner are among six finalists shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction this year, organizers said on September 16.
Five of the six authors are women — the largest number in the prize’s 55-year history, according to a report by AP. Everett, a 2022 Booker finalist for “The Trees,” is again nominated for “James,” which reimagines Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of its main Black character, the enslaved man Jim. Kushner, another former Booker finalist with her bestseller “The Mars Room,” is a contender again with spy story “Creation Lake.”
The other finalists vying for the 50,000 pound ($64,000) award are Britain’s Samantha Harvey, for “Orbital”; Canada’s Anne Michaels for “Held”; Australia’s Charlotte Wood for “Stone Yard Devotional”; and Yael van der Wouden — the first Dutch author to be shortlisted for the Booker— for her debut, “The Safekeep.”
The winner will be announced on Nov. 12 at a ceremony in London. Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize celebrates the best fiction and is open to novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland.
