Man Booker Prize announces 2016 longlist

The Man Booker Prize has announced a longlist of 13 books out of 155 submissions published in the United Kingdom (UK) between October 1, 2015 and September 30, 2016.
The longlist, which was announced yesterday, includes two-time winner, J.M. Coetzee, a South African-Australian, for his book ‘The Schooldays of Jesus’, Paul Beatty for ‘The Sellout’, A.L. Kennedy for ‘Serious Sweet’, Deborah Levy for ‘Hot Milk’, Graeme Macrae Burnet for ‘His Bloody Project’, Ian McGuire for ‘The North Water, David Means for ‘Hystopia’, Wyl Menmuir for ‘The Many’, Ottessa Moshfegh for ‘Eileen’, and Virginia Reeves for ‘Work Like Any Other’.  Also, in the list is Elizabeth Strout’s ‘My Name Is Lucy Barton’, David Szalay’s ‘All That Man Is’, and Madeleine Thien’s ‘Do Not Say We Have Nothing’.
Chair of the 2016 judges, Amanda Foreman, said: “This is a very exciting year. The range of books is broad and the quality extremely high. Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be…From the historical to the contemporary, the satirical to the polemical, the novels in this list come from both established writers and new voices. The writing is uniformly fresh, energetic and important. It is a longlist to be relished.”
Aside Coetzee, the rest of the authors are from the UK, United States and Canada.  This year’s books were selected by a panel of five judges, which includes Jon Day, Abdulrazak Gurnah, David Harsent, and Olivia Williams.
Coetzee won the Booker Prize in 1983 with ‘Life and Times of Michael K’ and then again with ‘Disgrace’ in 1999, making him the first writer to win the prize twice. Deborah Levy was shortlisted for the prize in 2012 for ‘Swimming Home’.
The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 13 at a press conference at the London offices of Man Group, the prize’s sponsor. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The 2016 winner will then be announced on October 25 in London’s Guildhall at a black-tie dinner, one of the highlights of the publishing year. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, worth £50, 000, first awarded in 1969, is open to writers of any nationality, writing originally in English and published in the UK.