Anne Tyler, Hanya Yanagihara Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize

DUBLIN author Anne Enright has failed to make the 2015 Man Booker Prize shortlist, as this year’s six finalists are named.

It was always a longshot, but Kiwi author Anna Smaill has missed the cut for the Man Booker Prize shortlist.

Until 2013, the Booker Prize was restricted to full-length novels written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe.

Tom McCarthy, Marlon James, Chigozie Obioma, Sunjeev Sahota, Anne Tyler and Hanya Yanagihara have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015.

Rounding off the list are Jamaican author Marlon James and Nigerian debutant Chigozie Obioma. Tyler, 73, is in the running for her 20th novel, “A Spool of Blue Thread“, which grapples with issues of old age and mortality.

While the books and their authors come from diverse contexts and countries, what they have in common is a tendency to “grimness”. Obioma is the youngest nominee this year at 28. In 2014, two American writers were included on the shortlist: Karen Joy Fowler We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves and Joshua Ferris To Rise Again At A Decent Hour. The judges considered 156 books for this year’s prize.

Wood is joined on the judging panel by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne.

The book is the Macalester College professor’s third novel.

Michael Wood, chairman of the judges, expressed delight in the diversity of the competition. Robbie Millen in The Times wrote that the judges of the Man Booker prize “never lose the power to infuriate”, this time for “the grievous sin of omission”. Of the six authors, two live in the United Kingdom and four in the US.

On October 15, a single victor will be chosen from among these six.

Jonathan Ruppin, web editor for Foyles, said that A Little Life had to be regarded as “the favourite”. English-language writing is a global phenomenon, blending a huge range of cultures, and the world’s biggest literary award now reflects this far better’. Bearing in mind that I am going on reviewer’s notes only for A Little Life, I feel it is safe to describe the five novels as emotionally hard reads, with moral ambiguity being not so much resolved as extinguished in various kinds of violence.