Five women in the running for UK Booker Prize

The winner of the Booker Prize is to be announced on Tuesday, with a record five female authors vying to win the prestigious English-language literary award.

Six authors from five countries have been shortlisted, with the winner of the £50,000 ($64,500) prize to be announced at a glitzy ceremony in London.

Last year’s prize was won by Irish writer Paul Lynch for his novel “Prophet Song” — a dystopian work about Ireland that descends into tyranny.

Previous winners include Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood.

The prize is seen as a talent spotter of names not necessarily widely known to the general public.

This year’s edition is no exception.

Yael van der Wouden is the first Dutch woman to be shortlisted with her first novel “The Safekeep”, which delves into the Netherlands’ Nazi past.

Should she win, she would follow in the footsteps of Douglas Stuart, who won the prize also with his debut novel, “Shuggie Bain”, in 2020.

The two favourites for the prize are Americans Percival Everett and Rachel Kushner.

– Slaves, spying, endangered species, space –

Everett’s profile has been boosted by “American Fiction” — the adaptation of his 2001 novel “Erasure” — which was nominated for best screenplay, best picture and other Oscars in 2023.

He is in the running for the Booker with “James”, loosely based on Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

This time, the narration is by and from the point of view of the slave Jim.

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Kushner’s “Creation Lake” dives into the world of espionage with the character Sadie Smith, an undercover agent who tries to infiltrate a group of environmental activists in rural France.

Canadian Anne Michaels, endorsed by her compatriot Atwood, is in the running with her third novel, “Held”.

It explores themes from her earlier books — history, memory, the effects of trauma and mourning — in the guise of a man trying to overcome the trauma of World War I.

Australian Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional” follows a nameless narrator disillusioned by her work as a conservationist trying to save endangered species who decides to move into a convent.

Briton Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital”, which follows six astronauts from Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain and Italy aboard the International Space Station, completes the shortlist.

The Booker is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between in the year from October 1, 2023.