Most of the biggest names in British fiction are in the running for this year's Man Booker prize, in what has been described as an "exceptional year" for novels by the judges. The longlist for the prize, announced on Wednesday includes four former winners of the prize - Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and J.M. Coetzee - and three first-time novelists among its 17 names.
The judges' chair, John Sutherland, said they had regarded 2005 as one of the strongest years for fiction since the prize was founded, and described the list as "nicely balanced [with] a satisfying range of styles".
Attention will focus on the divide between the established names, such as McEwan, Rushdie and Julian Barnes, and the later generation of literary talents like Zadie Smith, and first-timers Tash Aw, Marina Lewycka and Harry Thompson.
Rushdie, who won the "Booker of Bookers" for Midnight's Children in 1993, has been selected for his forthcoming work Shalimar the Clown, published next month, which tells the story of a young Muslim boy's conversion to terrorism by a radical mullah.
The shortlist for the £50,000 prize will be announced on September 8, and the winner on October 10. The longlist, which has been chosen from 109 entries, is: The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate); The Sea by John Banville (Picador); Arthur & George by Julian Barnes (Jonathan Cape); A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber); Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee (Secker & Warburg).
In the Fold by Rachel Cusk (Faber & Faber); Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber & Faber); All For Love by Dan Jacobson (Hamish Hamilton); A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (Viking); Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate); Saturday by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape); The People's Act of Love by James Meek (Canongate).
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape); The Accidental by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton); On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton); The Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson (Headline); and This Is the Country by William Wall (Hodder & Stoughton).
David Hayden, product manager of Foyles bookshop, said that the "longlist demonstrates the rude good health of novel writing in Britain and Ireland."
