Booker Prize-winning Indian author Kiran Desai is a favourite to win the coveted fiction trophy for a second time with her first novel in two decades.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is on a US-dominated six-book shortlist announced on Tuesday by a judging panel that includes Irish writer Roddy Doyle and actor Sarah Jessica Parker. The almost 700-page tale of two young Indians making their way in the United States is Desai’s third novel and her first since The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006.
Two previous Booker finalists are up for the £50,000 prize again: UK writer Andrew Miller for The Land in Winter, set during an early-1960s cold snap, and Hungarian-British writer David Szalay for Flesh, which charts one man’s life across decades.
Three novels by Americans complete the list: Susan Choi’s family saga Flashlight; Katie Kitamura’s tale of acting and identity, Audition; and midlife-crisis road trip The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits.
Doyle, who won the Booker winner himself in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, said the six books tackle big issues, including migration and class, in a “brilliantly human” way.
“They all follow the human in the stories,” Doyle said. “That might seem a bit trite, but I’ve read novels where I’ve often felt to myself, if there was a little bit less showing off there would be a good story there. And I don’t think any of these books show off.”
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Its winners have included Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel and Samantha Harvey, who won last year with Orbital.
Past winners have included debut novels – from Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things in 1997 to Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain in 2020 – but this year’s list is dominated by veterans. All the finalists are decades into their careers, and all but Desai have published at least five books.
“That’s the best thing about writing books,” said Kiley Reid, author of the novel Such a Fun Age and another member of the judging panel. “It’s not gymnastics. You don’t peak at any age. And seeing authors late into their careers have these wonderful moments, it’s really encouraging.”
Originally open to novels from the UK, Ireland, and the Commonwealth, the prize expanded in 2014 to admit American writers. Worries about an American takeover have largely proved unfounded, though this year’s list of six includes three American writers and a fourth, Desai, who has long lived in New York.
That’s likely to reignite grumbling from some in the UK, especially since big American fiction prizes like the Pulitzer and the National Book Awards are only open to US-based authors.
“Well, that’s not our only problem” in the US, Parker said. “As somebody who likes to read globally, I always want more and more diversity,” said the Sex and the City star, a longtime advocate for reading and literacy. “So I would love all literary awards and competitions to alert readers to great books, no matter where they’re from.”
The judges read 153 novels submitted by publishers, selecting 13 semifinalists and then narrowing that to six during a four-hour meeting. Another meeting looms to pick a winner, who will be crowned on 10 November at a ceremony in London.
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