Booker shortlist features a novel in verse

LONDON: The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize includes for the first time a book told in verse, the prize committee announced in London on Thursday.

‘The Long Take,’ by poet Robin Robertson, mixes verse, prose and even photographs to follow the story of a World War II veteran across the US in the golden era of Hollywood.

“‘The Long Take’ offers a wholly unique literary voice and form,” the judge Jacqueline Rose, a feminist critic and writer, said. “This is a genre-defying novel.”

The rest of the six-strong shortlist includes two American authors — Rachel Kushner for ‘The Mars Room,’ and Richard Powers for ‘The Overstory’ — suggesting the Booker Prize could again become embroiled in a debate about the eligibility of American authors since a rule change in 2014. Last year, an American, George Saunders, won for ‘Lincoln in the Bardo,’ and in 2016 another writer from the US, Paul Beatty, won with ‘The Sellout’.

The shortlist also includes: Anna Burns for ‘Milkman,’ an experimental novel that looks at Ireland in the time of the Troubles through the mind of a young girl.

Esi Edugyan for the novel ‘Washington Black,’ in which an enslaved boy and his master’s brother flee a plantation in Barbados and forge an unlikely bond.

British writer Daisy Johnson, 27, became the youngest author to be shortlisted for her debut novel, ‘Everything Under,’ in which a reunited mother and daughter delve into their eerie past. The winner of the prize — £50,000, or about $65,000 — will be announced on October 16.