Press Release
Man Booker Prize announces 2016 longlist
www.themanbookerprize.com | #FinestFiction
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Former double winner J.M. Coetzee makes the list
Four debuts among the list of 13 novels
Five UK and five US authors alongside three Commonwealth authors
The longlist, or ‘Man Booker Dozen’, for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize is announced today,
Wednesday 27 July 2016.
This year’s longlist of 13 books was selected by a panel of five judges: Amanda Foreman
(Chair); Jon Day; Abdulrazak Gurnah; David Harsent and Olivia Williams. It was chosen
from 155 submissions published in the UK between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, is open to writers of any
nationality, writing originally in English and published in the UK.
2016 Man Booker Dozen
The 2016 longlist, or Man Booker ‘Dozen’, of 13 novels, is:
Author (nationality)
Title (imprint)
Paul Beatty (US)
The Sellout (Oneworld)
J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) The Schooldays of Jesus (Harvill Secker)
A.L. Kennedy (UK)
Serious Sweet (Jonathan Cape)
Deborah Levy (UK)
Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK)
His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ian McGuire (UK)
The North Water (Scribner UK)
David Means (US)
Hystopia (Faber & Faber)
Wyl Menmuir (UK)
The Many (Salt)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US)
Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
Virginia Reeves (US)
Work Like Any Other (Scribner UK)
Elizabeth Strout (US)
My Name Is Lucy Barton (Viking)
David Szalay (Canada-UK)
All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada)
Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
Chair of the 2016 judges, Amanda Foreman, comments:
‘This is a very exciting year. The range of books is broad and the quality extremely high.
Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our
expectations of what a novel is and can be.
‘From the historical to the contemporary, the satirical to the polemical, the novels in this list
come from both established writers and new voices. The writing is uniformly fresh,
energetic and important. It is a longlist to be relished.’
Former double winner J.M. Coetzee makes the list with The Schooldays of Jesus. He won
the then Booker Prize in 1983 with Life & Times of Michael K and then again with Disgrace
in 1999, making him the first writer to win the prize twice. Deborah Levy was shortlisted for
the prize in 2012 for Swimming Home. A.L. Kennedy was a judge for the prize in 1996, the
year Graham Swift won with Last Orders.
Four debut novels make the longlist: Hystopia by David Means; The Many by Wyl
Menmuir; Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves.
Publishers large and small are represented with six titles from Penguin Random House
imprints (Harvill Secker, Jonathan Cape, Hamish Hamilton, Viking); two from Simon &
Schuster’s Scribner UK imprint; and five from independent publishers, including Saraband,
Faber & Faber, Salt, Granta and Oneworld. Oneworld celebrated its first Man Booker
success last year, when Marlon James won the prize with A Brief History of Seven Killings.
The shortlist and winner announcements
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday 13 September at a press
conference at the London offices of Man Group, the prize’s sponsor. The shortlisted authors
each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
The 2016 winner will then be announced on Tuesday 25 October in London’s Guildhall at
a black-tie dinner, one of the highlights of the publishing year. The ceremony will be
broadcast by the BBC.
The winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize will receive a further £50,000 and can expect
international recognition. Last year’s winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings by
Marlon James, has sold over 315,000 copies to date in the UK and Commonwealth and is
available in 20 languages.
On winning, James commented: ‘I just met Ben Okri and it just reminded me of how much
my literary sensibilities were shaped by the Man Booker Prize.’
HBO has optioned screen rights to the novel for a series adaptation and, since winning,
James has spent the year travelling around the globe, speaking at festivals as diverse as the
Jaipur Festival, the Auckland Writers’ Festival, the Sydney Writers Festival, the Hay,
Manchester and Brighton Festivals in the UK, the Calabash International Literary Festival
in Jamaica and the Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad and Tobago.
The leading prize for quality fiction in English
First awarded in 1969, the Man Booker Prize is recognised as the leading prize for high
quality literary fiction written in English. Its list of winners features many of the literary
giants of the last four decades: from Iris Murdoch to Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan to
Hilary Mantel.
The rules of the prize were changed at the end of 2013 to embrace the English language ‘in
all its vigour, its vitality, its versatility and its glory’, opening up to writers beyond the UK
and Commonwealth.
The Man Booker Prize is sponsored by Man Group, one of the world’s largest independent
alternative investment managers.
For further information about the prize please visit www.themanbookerprize.com or
follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/ManBookerPrize
For all press enquiries please contact:
Four Colman Getty on +44(0)20 3697 4200
Katy MacMillan-Scott [email protected]
Rosie Beaumont-Thomas [email protected]
Notes to Editors
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The 2016 longlist consists of 13 books. The rules state that a longlist of 12 or 13 books – ‘The
Man Booker Dozen’ – is to be selected, followed by a shortlist of six. UK publishers may
submit novels written in the English language and published in the UK between 1 October
2015 and 30 September 2016. The number of books a publisher can submit will depend on
that publisher’s inclusion in longlists over the previous five years, as follows:
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Publishers with no longlistings – 1 submission
Publishers with 1 or 2 longlisting(s) – 2 submissions
Publishers with 3 or 4 longlistings – 3 submissions
Publishers with 5 or more longlistings – 4 submissions
This means that the number of submissions for each publisher may change from year to year.
A new work by any author who has previously been shortlisted for the Booker (pre-2002) or
Man Booker Prize is automatically eligible
In addition, the judges ‘call in’ a number of novels each year: in addition to their main
submission, a publisher may submit a list of up to five titles for consideration, accompanied
by a justification from the editor. The judges are required to call in no fewer than eight and
no more than 12 of these titles. The judges are also permitted to call in other books published
within the requisite dates, even if the book has not been submitted through any other route
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Four Colman Getty handles PR and event management for the prize and provides all events
and administrative back-up
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The Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation is Gaby Wood. The Administrator of
the Man Booker International Prize is Fiammetta Rocco – Culture Editor of The Economist
and 1843
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Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction with A Brief History of Seven
Killings (Oneworld). To date, over 315,000 copies of the book have been sold in the UK and
Commonwealth
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The Man Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969 and has been sponsored by Man
Group since 2002. The long-term future of the prize was secured in 2011 with the
announcement of a renewed 10-year sponsorship from Man Group. The title ‘Booker Prize’
therefore only applies to prize years 1969 – 2001, before Man Group plc’s sponsorship
began, and since 2002 it has been called The Man Booker Prize for Fiction. It would be
greatly appreciated if you could ensure that your editorial is factually correct by referring to
the prize’s full title at least once, if not in the headline, then in your next subsequent
mention. For a full history of the prize including previous winners, shortlisted authors and
judges visit the website: www.themanbookerprize.com
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The Man Booker International Prize is awarded annually for the best single work of fiction
translated into English and published in the UK. The £50,000 prize is divided equally
between the author and the translator. Each shortlisted author and translator receives
£1,000. The 2016 winner was The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith.
2016 was the first year of the newly evolved prize, which was originally established in 2005
as a biennial prize awarded to an author for an achievement in fiction
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The trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation are: Baroness Kennedy QC – Chair, former
Chair of the British Council and Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford; Lord Baker of
Dorking CH; Bidisha – writer, critic and broadcaster; Victoria Glendinning CBE –
biographer; James Naughtie – broadcaster; Ben Okri – writer and 1991 Booker Prize winner;
Christopher Pearce – former Finance Director of Rentokil plc; Professor Louise Richardson
– Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford; Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Sir
Ronald Harwood and Baroness Neuberger are Vice Presidents of the Foundation. Jonathan
Taylor CBE is President of the Foundation
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The Booker Prize Foundation Advisory Committee, which advises on any changes to the
rules and on the selection of the judges, represents all aspects of the book world. Its
members are: Mark Chilton – Company Secretary and General Counsel of Booker Group
plc; Jonty Claypole – Head of Arts, BBC; James Daunt – Managing Director of Waterstones;
Jonathan Douglas – Director of the National Literacy Trust; Maggie Fergusson – writer and
Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature; Adam Freudenheim – publisher, Pushkin Press;
Derek Johns – Author & Literary Agent; Peter Kemp – Chief Fiction Reviewer, The Sunday
Times; Rosanna Konarzewski – Man Group plc; Nigel Newton – publisher, Bloomsbury;
Fiammetta Rocco – Culture Editor, The Economist and 1843 and Man Booker International
Prize Administrator; Michal Shavit - publishing director, Jonathan Cape; Eve Smith –
Secretary, the Booker Prize Foundation; Boyd Tonkin – Writer and Critic; Gaby Wood –
Literary Director, Booker Prize Foundation
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Man Group has sponsored the Man Booker Prize since 2002. A leading alternative
investment management firm founded in 1783, Man Group was recognised as a partner who
mirrored the quality, integrity and longevity of the Booker Prize. The prize underscores Man
Group's charitable focus on literacy and education as well as the firm’s commitment to
excellence and entrepreneurship. Together with the wider charitable activities of the Booker
Prize Foundation, the prize plays a very important role in promoting literary excellence on a
global scale that the firm is honoured to support
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Man Group is one of the world’s largest independent alternative investment managers, and a
leader in liquid investment strategies. Across its four investment managers (Man AHL, Man
FRM, Man GLG and Man Numeric), Man Group has diverse hedge fund strategies and long
only products spanning equity, credit, managed futures, convertibles, emerging markets and
multi-manager solutions. At 30 June 2016, Man Group’s funds under management were
$76.4 billion. The original business was founded in 1783. Today, Man Group plc is listed on
the London Stock Exchange under the ticker EMG.L and is a constituent of the FTSE 250
Index. Man Group supports many awards, charities and initiatives around the world,
including sponsorship of the Man Booker literary prizes. Further information can be found
at www.man.com
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Booker is the UK's leading food wholesaler with over 170 branches nationwide. It serves
over 350,000 independent businesses
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The Booker Prize Foundation has a longstanding partnership with RNIB (Royal National
Institute of Blind People). The Foundation funds the production of the shortlisted titles in
braille, giant print and audio, which the sight loss charity produces by the date the winner is
announced. The accessible versions are then made available to the tens of thousands of blind
and partially sighted members of the RNIB Library. People with sight loss have a limited
choice of books in accessible formats and often have to wait much longer than their sighted
peers for titles to be made available to them – and there are many more books that they will
never have the chance to read. The Foundation is working with RNIB to change this story.
For further information contact the RNIB PR Team on 020 7391 2223 or
[email protected]
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The Booker Prize Archive was given on loan in 2003 to Oxford Brookes University where it
now resides
Four Colman Getty,
July 2016