Glory, a novel inspired by the fall of strongman Robert Mugabe from power has been longlisted for The Booker Prize.
Authored by the award-winning author of the Booker-prize finalist, NoViolet Bulawayo, the page turner narrates the slump of an oppressive regime, a long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a disorderly nation of animals on the path to true liberation.
The chair of judges, Neil MacGregor says this year’s Booker prize longlist is “challenging, stimulating, surprising, nourishing”. It contains the youngest and oldest authors ever to be nominated for the award.
Twenty year old Leila Mottley and Alan Garner, who is 87, are among 13 writers to make the longlist for this year’s prize. MacGregor said the list offers “story, fable and parable, fantasy, mystery, meditation and thriller”.
Here is The Booker prize longlist of 13 writers:
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
Trust by Hernan Diaz
The Trees by Percival Everett
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shahan Karunatilaka
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
The Colony by Audrey Magee
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
After Sappho by Selby Lynn Schwartz
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
Originally open to British, Irish, and Commonwealth writers, the Booker Prize was founded in 1969. Eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the U.K and is reputed for transforming writers’ careers.
Last year’s winner was The Promise, by South Africa’s Damon Galgut. A six-book shortlist will be announced Sept. 6, and the winner will be crowned October 17 at a ceremony in London.
NoViolet Bulawayo is the pseudonym of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, she’s a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in the US.