Irish author and Laureate for Fiction Anne Enright has been included in the longlist for this year's Man Booker Longlist for her novel The Green Road.
The Green Road traces 25 years in the life of an Irish family beginning in 1980. Rosaleen has taken to the bed because her son Dan has declared his intention to become a priest. When the story moves to 2005, there have been dramatic changes in the family, which also includes the two daughters Hannah and Constance.
Enright won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering in 2007, another Irish family saga which won the author much acclaim not just in here in Ireland but also internationally.
Other Irish authors who had been tipped for selection included Colm Toibín for Nora Webster and Paul Murray for The Mark and The Void.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, now in its 47th year, is worth £50,000 (€63,000) with exceptionally healthy sales guaranteed in the wake of the announcement, augmented further by translations. Yann Martel's novel, Life of Pi, is the highest-selling Man Booker-winning novel of all. The award is chaired by Michael Wood and this year’s judges are Ellah Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne.
Iris Murdoch was the first Irish writer to win the prize in 1978 with The Sea, the Sea.In 1993 Roddy Doyle won for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. In 2005 John Banville’s The Sea gained the accolade and two years later Anne Enright won for her novel The Gathering in 2007.
The other Longlisted novels include:
Bill Clegg (US) - Did You Ever Have a Family
Marlon James (Jamaica) A Brief History of Seven Killings
Laila Lalami (US) The Moor's Account
Tom McCarthy (UK) Satin Island
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) The Fishermen
Andrew O’Hagan (UK) The Illuminations
Marilynne Robinson (US) Lila
Anuradha Roy (India) Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota (UK) The Year of the Runaways
Anna Smaill (New Zealand) The Chimes;
Anne Tyler (US) A Spool of Blue Thread
Hanya Yanagihara (US) A Little Life.
The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday September 15 and the winner will be announced on Tuesday October 13.
Drum roll please… The moment you’ve all been waiting for, the #ManBooker2015 longlist is: pic.twitter.com/5BYxgzGxQp
— Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) July 29, 2015
