21 September 2015
What a fascinating job this year's Man Booker committee is doing, and how difficult they're making life for the poor souls charged with calling the odds. The longlist announcement in July arrived with a mighty clatter of falling idols, cheerfully passing over the big noises of modern fiction - Rushdie, Atwood, Franzen, Ishiguro, Harper Lee - in favour of a 13-book list stuffed with new voices and uncommon writing from the US, the UK, Ireland, India, Jamaica, Nigeria and New Zealand. Further crashes and tinkles now accompany the release of this year's shortlist, which trims another seven novels to leave us with the most interesting finish-line tussle in years.
