Nine nationalities among the 13 nominated for the Booker Literary Prize

According to the website for the award -- one of the most important for fiction in the English language -- there are two debut authors among the nominees, of which nine are chosen for the first time to be on the Booker shortlist.

The nominees are 'Love Forms' by Claire Adam, 'The South' by Tash Aw, 'Universality' by Natasha Brown, 'One Boat' by Jonathan Buckley, 'Flashlight' by Susan Choi, 'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny' by Kiran Desai (nominated 19 years after her previous book, 'The Inheritance of the Void', won the Booker), 'Audition' by Katie Kitamura, 'The Rest of Our Lives' by Ben Markovits, 'The Land in Winter' by Andrew Miller, 'Endling' by Maria Reva, 'Flesh' by David Szalay, 'Seascraper' by Benjamin Wood and 'Misinterpretation' by Ledia Xhoga.

The nominees were chosen from 153 candidate books, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October last year and September this year.

"The 13 novels transport readers to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate, and a small coastal town in Greece. They illuminate the lives of Koreans in post-colonial Japan, a homesick Indian woman in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor in New York, a shrimp fisherman in northern England, a mother's search for a child given up for adoption in Venezuela, and even endangered snails in contemporary Ukraine," reads the organization's description.

The jury for this edition of the Booker Prize is composed of Irishman Roddy Doyle, the first Booker winner to chair a panel, Nigerian writer Ay?`bámi Adébáy?`, American actress, producer and editor Sarah Jessica Parker, British writer Chris Power and American author Kiley Reid.

The list includes three titles from the independent publisher Faber and the Booker debut of Fitzcarraldo editions, which have already been nominated 16 times for their international counterpart.

Indian author Kiran Desai is the only Booker Prize-winning author on the list of nominees released today, while Tash Aw, a Malaysian writer who grew up in the UK, where she still lives, has earned her third nomination.

British Andrew Miller and Hungarian-British David Szalay are the two other names previously nominated for the Booker.

'Misinterpretation', by New York-based Albanian Ledia Xhoga, and 'Endling', by Canadian Maria Reva, are the only two debut novels on the list.

Although none of the nominated books have been published in Portugal, given that they are recent works or yet to be published in the English-speaking world, names such as Tash Aw ('The Silk Factory', published by Difel in 2006, translated by Maria Isabel Veríssimo), Natasha Brown ('Encontro', by Livros do Brasil in 2022, translated by Tânia Ganho) or Desai ('The Inheritance of the Void', by Porto Editora, in 2007, translated by Vera Falcão Martins) have been published.

Katie Kitamura also has her work translated in Portugal ('Intimidades', by Quetzal, in 2022, translated by Tânia Ganho), as well as the British author Andrew Miller, published in Portugal since the 1990s (with his debut, 'A Dor Industriosa', by Teorema, translated by Telma Costa, in 1999) and even 'A Cidade Impura' (by Presença, in 2012, translated by Miguel Romeira).

Elsinore published two works by David Szalay ('Everything a Man Is', in 2018, translated by Miguel Romeira, and 'Turbulence', the following year, translated by Joana Neves).

The finalists for this year's Booker Prize will be announced on September 23, and the winning work will be revealed on November 10. The winner will receive a prize of £50,000 (€57,700).

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