For the very first time, a graphic novel has been added to this year’s longlist for the Man Booker Prize. Sabrina by Nick Drnaso explores the terrifying effect of the 24-hour news after a girl disappeared. Here is a judge’s comment of their selection of Sabrina:
Given the changing shape of fiction, it was only a matter of time before a graphic novel was included on the Man Booker longlist. Sabrina makes demands on the reader in precisely the way all good fiction does. Oblique, subtle, minimal, unmanipulative: the style of the pictures is the book’s worldview. Drnaso uses images to express an idea about what’s invisible – an idea about uncertainty, and the different kinds of holes that missing people leave in our lives.”
The list was chosen from 171 submissions, the highest number of titles ever put forward in the prize’s 50 year history. The chosen books had to be published in the UK and Ireland between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018.
Here are the 13 titles on the 2018 Man Booker Longlist:
Kwame Anthony Appiah, chair of the committee, said that the books on the list had managed to disrupt the way we think of things:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the times,” he said, “there were many dystopian fictions on our bookshelf – and many novels we found inspirational as well as disturbing. Some of those we have chosen for this longlist feel urgent and topical; others might have been admired and enjoyed in any year. All of these books – which take in slavery, ecology, missing persons, inner-city violence, young love, prisons, trauma, race – capture something about a world on the brink.”
The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives a cash prize of £50,000. The shortlist will be announced on September 20. The winner will be announced on October 16.