The Man Booker prize 2010 shortlist

C by Tom McCarthy

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

Buy C at the Guardian bookshop

Read an extract from C

Photograph: PR

Room by Emma Donoghue

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.

Buy Room at the Guardian bookshop Photograph: PR

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut 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 Photograph: PR

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Jacobson's novel 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

Buy The Finkler Question at the Guardian bookshop Photograph: PR

Parrot and Oliver in America by Peter Carey

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

Buy Parrot and Olivier in America at the Guardian bookshop Photograph: PR

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

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. Photograph: PR