The prestigious British literary prize Booker Prize will be chosen Wednesday, November 3 among six finalists whose novels evoke subjects as diverse as apartheid in South Africa, social networks or the civil war in Sri Lanka.
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Three men and three women are in contention, including three Americans. Among the latter, the first American novelist Patricia Lockwood, 39, is in the running for
No One is talking About This
, which follows the well-regulated life of an American addicted to social networks and became, somewhat by chance, an influencer. The narrator questions the immediacy and superficiality of the virtual world in which she lives, without succeeding in detaching herself from it.
Patricia Lockwood faces two compatriots: Richard Powers, 64, for
Bewilderment
(published under the title
Siderations
by Actes Sud in France), in which an astrobiologist escapes to fantastic worlds with his son suffering from behavioral disorders, and Maggie Shipstead, 38, for
Great Circle
, which takes readers through the intertwined journeys of a 20th-century aviator and a 21st-century Hollywood star.
A face-to-face award ceremony
Among the favorites is South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut, 57, who is in the final for the third time. Covering the period from the end of apartheid until the presidency of Jacob Zuma, his book,
The Promise
, traces the gradual dislocation of a white family in Pretoria as the country emerges towards democracy. The
New Yorker
called it
"remarkable"
, while the
Sunday Times
of South Africa found it
"astonishing how much history Galgut manages to put into this short novel"
.
Also among the favorites, Richard Powers won the Pulitzer prize in the fiction with
The Overstory
(
The World Tree
) published in 2018 and is found in the final of the Booker Prize for the second time.
The other finalists are the Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam, 33, with
A passage North
, which discusses trauma and memories of the civil war in Sri Lanka and the British-Somali Nadifa Mohamed, 40, for
The Fortune Men
, based on the true story of a Somali man wrongfully convicted and executed for the murder of a woman in Cardiff harbor in Wales in 1952.
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These six books had been selected by the five jurors among 158 novels published in the United Kingdom or Ireland between October 1, 2020 and September 30, 2021. Last year, the prize was awarded to the Scottish Douglas Stuart for his first
Shuggie Bain
novel
, set in a working-class Glasgow family plagued by alcoholism and poverty in the 1980s.
The winner's name will be announced at an event in London broadcast on the BBC on Wednesday evening.
It will bring all the finalists together in person, after video conference appearances in the previous edition, due to restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
With this prize, a reward of 50,000 pounds (around 55,000 euros) and the assurance of international fame synonymous with success in bookstores.