Booker Prize longlist announced, JM Coetzee favourite to win third crown

London: Celebrated South African novelist JM Coetzee and US Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout are among the contenders announced for Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction.

The 13-book longlist that was announced on Wednesday features Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus and Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton, but has spurned big-name writers including Ian McEwan and Don DeLillo in favor of less famous authors and first-time novelists.

Coetzee, who lives in Australia, is the early bookies’ favorite and will become the first triple Booker winner if he takes the prize. He won in 1983 with Life and Times of Michael K and in 1999 with Disgrace.

Strout won the fiction Pulitzer in 2009 for Olive Kitteridge, which was turned into an HBO mini-series starring Frances McDormand.

The eclectic list features four first novels — David Means’ Hystpoia, Wyl Menmuir’s The Many, Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen and Virginia Reeves’ Work Like Any Other — alongside established authors such as AK Kennedy for Serious Sweet and Deborah Levy for Hot Milk. There’s also a rare nomination for a crime thriller, Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project.

The list includes six British writers (one of them, David Szalay, born in Canada), five Americans and a Canadian, Madeleine Thien, for Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

Biographer Amanda Foreman, who chairs the five-member judging panel, said the books had “provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be”.

Previously open to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, the Booker expanded in 2014 to include all English-language authors. Despite fears of US dominance, there has not yet been an American winner of the prize, which usually brings the victor a huge sales boost.

Six finalists will be announced on 13 September and the winner of the 50,000 pound ($65,000) prize will be named on 25 October. Founded in 1969, the award is named after its sponsor, financial services firm Man Group PLC.