• Indian author Kiran Desai has made it to the longlist for the Booker Prize with her latest novel ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’.

• It is one of 13 books announced as semifinalists for the prestigious prize. 

• It is Desai’s first novel since ‘The Inheritance of Loss’, which won the Booker in 2006.

• Kiran Desai is the only previous Booker winner on this year’s longlist.  

• If Desai wins this year, she would become only the fifth double winner in the prize’s 56-year history. Her mother, Anita Desai, was shortlisted for the Booker three times. 

• The contenders include authors from nine countries on four continents.

• A list of six finalists will be announced on September 23, and this year’s winner will be crowned on November 10 at a ceremony in London.

• The Booker Prize winner receives £50,000.

The longlist

• The list features a selection of 13 long-form fiction by seven women and six men from nine countries. 

The 13 nominated books are: 

i) Love Forms - by Claire Adam   

ii) The South - by Tash Aw   

iii) Universality - by Natasha Brown   

iv) One Boat - by Jonathan Buckley   

v) Flashlight - by Susan Choi   

vi) The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny - by Kiran Desai  

vii) Audition - by Katie Kitamura  

viii) The Rest of Our Lives - by Ben Markovits  

ix) The Land in Winter - by Andrew Miller  

x) Endling - by Maria Reva  

xi) Flesh - by David Szalay  

xii) Seascraper - by Benjamin Wood  

xiii) Misinterpretation - by Ledia Xhoga. 

• The longest book on the list is Kiran Desai’s ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, weighing in at over 650 pages, while the shortest is Universality by Natasha Brown — a small but mighty 156 pages, and one of four books on this year’s list that are under 200 pages long.

The Booker Prize

• The Booker Prize awards any work of long form fiction originally written in English and published in the UK and Ireland in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of their author. The work of long form fiction must be an original work in English (not a translation) and published by a registered UK or Irish imprint. Self-published works of long form fiction are not eligible. 

• The Booker Prize is worth £50,000 to the winner. It is awarded to the author of the best, eligible full-length work of long form fiction in the opinion of the judges. In addition, £2,500 is awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.

• The Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969.

• Past winners of the Booker include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel.

International Booker Prize

• The International Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, has been awarded since 2005, when it was won by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

• It is awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. 

• It is a sister prize to the Booker Prize.

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