At the age of 20, US signed Leila Mottley has been longlisted for "Nightcrawling".
The oldest and youngest contenders ever nominated are in the organization for this year's Booker fiction prize after judges on Tuesday announced a longlist devoid of some star authors.
The list of 13 novels will be whittled down to a shortlist on September 6, beforehand the prestigious British award is conferred on October 17, handing its winner a career-changing boost in sales and Republican profile.
The award ceremony in London coincides with the 88th birthday of Alan Garner, who made his name with children's fantasy titles and folk retellings.
After six decades in tag, the Englishman earns his first Booker nod this year for "Treacle Walker". Meanwhile, at the age of 20, US author Leila Mottley has been longlisted for "Nightcrawling".
Ms Mottley is one of three debut novelists on the list, against Britain's Maddie Mortimer ("Maps of our Spectacular Bodies") and American writer Selby Wynn Schwartz ("After Sappho").
At 116 pages, Irish author Claire Keegan's "Small Things Like These" is the shortest fresh recognised in the Booker prize's 53-year history.
NoViolet Bulawayo, Karen Joy Fowler, and Graeme Macrae Burnet are previously shortlisted authors who made the grade this year.
But some necessary names were absent, including Jennifer Egan, Ian McEwan, and Hanya Yanagihara, with the judges leaning particularly towards smaller, independent publishers.
"The list that we have selected funds story, fable and parable, fantasy, mystery, meditation, and thriller," the Booker panel's chair, British cultural historian Neil MacGregor, said in a statement.
He said the longlist -- drawn from the tap from an initial total of 169 novels submitted by publishers -- includes discussion of contemporary themes such as the Covid pandemic and questions of racial and gender injustice.
Another latter-day anguish revolving around "post-truth" politics often crops up.
"The extent to which we can qualified the word, spoken or written, is in many of these books the real subjects under examination," MacGregor said.
African authors have been ascendant in English-language fiction, scooping the Nobel, Booker, and Goncourt prizes last year.
If the trend remains, that could favour "Glory" by Zimbabwe's Bulawayo on the Booker list for 2022, which features eight women and five men.
Shehan Karunatilaka from Sri Lanka is the only new longlisted author not from the British Isles or the Married States, for "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida".
The Booker is Britain's foremost literary award for novels written in English. Its previous recipients include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and Hilary Mantel.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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