Tom McCarthy’s first novel was published in a run of just 750 copies by an underground French imprint after the UK turned it down; it was subsequently snapped up by independent British publisher Alma Books after word of mouth began to grow, and McCarthy is now published by Random House. This third novel, C, opens in the early 20th century and follows the story of Serge Carrefax, whose father runs a school for deaf children while experimenting with wireless communication. After working as a radio operator during the First World War, Serge is later taken to a German prison camp, escapes, and eventually ends up in an Egyptian tomb.
Read Tom McCarthy on technology and literature
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Lisa Moore won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for her novel Alligator, which was also longlisted for the Orange. This new novel tells the story of the sinking of the oil rig Ocean Ranger off Newfoundland in 1982, which killed Helen O’Mara’s husband Cal, and of the decades of mourning which followed. A quarter of a century later, Helen is called by her son Jake, who has made a girl pregnant and wants his mother’s advice.
Read Sarah Crown’s review
Read Lisa Moore’s essay about her grief following her father’s death
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The first of two titles from small publisher Atlantic Books – which won the Booker with Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger in 2008 – this is South African author Galgut’s story of a young man’s travels through Greece, India and Africa, telling of the people he meets as each trip ends in disaster. Galgut, who lives in Cape Town, has previously been shortlisted for the Booker for his novel The Good Doctor.
Read Jan Morris’s review
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Donoghue, an Irish writer who lives in Canada, tells the story of a five-year-old boy, Jack, who has been imprisoned with his mother in a tiny room - 11 feet by 11 feet - for his whole life. Told in his voice as he learns of a world outside his small prison, the book has already been praised by Audrey Niffenegger and Anita Shreve.
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Paul Murray is a former bookseller whose first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, was shortlisted for the Whitbread. His second is a tragic comedy set in a Dublin Catholic boarding school, where Daniel “Skippy" Juster dies during a doughnut eating race.
Read Patrick Ness’s review
Read Paul Murray’s top 10 wicked clerics
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Out next month, this new novel from Jacobson tells of the friendship between a former radio producer, a Jewish philosopher and their former teacher, the evening they spend together reminiscing and the attack on one of them which follows. Jacobson was longlisted for the Booker for his novel Kalooki Nights, and Nicholas Lezard wrote in the Guardian of his last book, The Act of Love, “Why did the Booker judges not recognise it? Scaredy-cats.”
Listen to Howard Jacobson on the Guardian Books podcast
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Previous Orange prize-winner Andrea Levy makes the cut for her story of the end of slavery, The Long Song, set in Jamaica “during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed”. It has already been longlisted for this year’s Orange.
Read Gary Younge’s interview with Andrea Levy
Read Alex Clark’s review of The Long Song
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Atlantic’s second novel on the longlist, The Slap has already won the Commonwealth writers’ prize. The novel takes place at a suburban Australian barbecue, and tells of the consequences of hitting someone else’s child.
Read Jane Smiley’s review
Read Christos Tsiolkas’s essay about his Greek grandmother
Listen to Tsiolkas on the Guardian Books podcast
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Chosen as one of Granta’s 20 best of young British novelists in 2003, Warner is longlisted for the Booker for his sixth, The Stars in the Bright Sky, a sequel to his third, The Sopranos. In the earlier book the girls were still at school, travelling to Edinburgh for a singing competition. In this new novel they are at Gatwick, taking a cheap last minute holiday together and ready to go wild.
Read Thomas Jones’s review
Read a 2006 Observer interview with Alan Warner
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David Mitchell has been shortlisted twice for the Booker but has yet to win it. He’s in with a third chance with his fifth novel, set on a Japanese island during the 18th century where uptight Dutch bookkeeper Jacob falls in love with Japanese woman Miss Aibagawa. “This may not, quite, be a masterpiece, but it is unquestionably a marvel – entirely original among contemporary British novels, revealing its author as, surely, the most impressive fictional mind of his generation,” said the Observer of the novel.
Read Alexander Linklater’s review
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The third Orange prize winner on this year’s Booker longlist is Rose Tremain, in the running with her 11th novel Trespass. Set in the mountains of the Cévennes, it tells of London antiques dealer Anthony Verey, looking to start again in France, and the disaster which ensues as he tries to buy a stone farmhouse from its alcoholic owner Aramon.
Read Alex Clark’s review
Listen to Rose Tremain on the Guardian Books podcast
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Two-time Booker winner Peter Carey is in with a third chance for this story of the friendship between French aristocrat Olivier and his servant Parrot, who has always wanted to be a painter but ends up working for Olivier as “spy, protector, foe and foil” when he set out for the New World.
Read Ursula K Le Guin’s review
Read an extract
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Orange prize winner Helen Dunmore is up for the Booker with The Betrayal, a sequel to The Siege, which tells the story of 1952 Leningrad under Stalin, where a young doctor and a nursery school teacher struggle to avoid coming to the authorities’ attention.
Read Susanna Rustin’s review of The Betrayal
Read Sarah Crown’s interview with Helen Dunmore
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