This year’s Booker Prize shortlist will feature the biggest number of women authors in its 55-year history. Five women and one man will feature on the shortlist for the prestigious literary prize. Advertisement The list, whittled down from a longlist of 13, also includes the first Australian author in a decade, as well as the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted.
British, Canadian and American authors comprise the rest of the six-strong list, with two authors making the shortlist for the second time. Advertisement View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vintage Books (@vintagebooks) Advertisement One of the books featured is Orbital, by English novelist Samantha Harvey, which centres around six astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), with Harvey previously explaining: “I wanted to write about our human occupation of low earth orbit for the last quarter of a century – not as sci-fi but as realism. Advertisement “Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer? Could I write about amazement? Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral? These were the challenges I set myself.
” Harvey was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009 for The Wilderness, and previously published a memoir about her insomnia, The Shapeless Unease: A Year Of Not Sleeping, in 2020. Advertisement Percival Everett was shortlisted in 2002 for The Trees (PA) Two American authors features on the list – Percival Everett for James and Rachel Kushner for C.