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JM Coetzee up for a record third Man Booker Prize
The South African-born novelist is ‘longlisted’ for his new novel, ‘Summertime’
One of only two people ever to win the Man Booker Prize twice is a contender to win it a record third time, following the release today of the longlist for the annual fiction prize. J M Coetzee, the South African who now lives in Adelaide, southern Australia, won for The Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and for Disgrace in 1995. He's on the list today for Summertime, published in Britain by Harvill Secker.
The longlist of 13 novels features another previous Booker winner who also likes to go by her initials - AS (rather than Antonia) Byatt. She won in 1990 for Possession and is on the longlist for The Children's Book, published by Chatto.
As is traditional, this year's chairman of the judges - BBC Today programme host James Naughtie - proclaimed it the strongest list ever. "A span of titles and themes," he said, made it "an outstandingly rich fictional mix".
If Coetzee does win again, the sponsors will be hoping the notoriously reclusive writer actually turns up to collect his prize. He has not done so on either previous occasion - though he did travel to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 (pictured above).
First, however, he has to make it onto the shortlist, which will be announced on September 8 - a month before the 2009 winner is revealed at the traditional Guildhall dinner on October 6.
Others on the longlist are: Adam Foulds for The Quickening Maze (Jonathan Cape); Sarah Hall for How to Paint a Dead Man (Faber); Samantha Harvey for The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape); James Lever for Me Cheeta (Fourth Estate); Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate); Simon Mawer for The Glass Room (Little, Brown); Ed O'Loughlin for Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Penguin - Ireland); James Scudamore for Heliopolis (Harvill Secker); Colm Toibin for Brooklyn (Viking); William Trevor for Love and Summer (Viking) and Sarah Waters for The Little Stranger (Virago).
In a departure from the norm this year, a Man Booker Prize enthusiast will mount the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square to give readings from all 13 longlisted titles. Be there at 11am on August 11. ·
