Finalists Announced for 2011 Man Booker International

The contenders for this year’s Man Booker International award hail from eight countries and offer a pretty serious slice of some of the best writing in the world. The high stakes are only appropriate: the £60,000 award is one of the richest on Earth, not to mention that it is (arguably) one of the most prestigious.

Notably, the Man Booker organization announced that novelist “John le Carré asked that his books should not be submitted for the annual prize to give less established authors the opportunity to win.” He is on the list anyway, along with David Maalouf, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler, Rohinton Mistry and Philip Pullman.

The 2011 Man Booker chair, writer, academic and rare book dealer Dr. Rick Gekoski, announced the finalists, saying that the “2011 list of finalists honours 13 great writers from around the world. It is, we think, diverse, fresh and thought-provoking, and serves to remind us anew of the importance of fiction in defining both ourselves and the world in which we live. Each of these writers is a delight, and any of them would make a worthy winner.”

The winner will be announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 18th and celebrated at an awards ceremony in London on June 28th.

The thirteen authors on the list are:

Wang Anyi (China)
Juan Goytisolo (Spain)
James Kelman (UK)
John le Carré (UK)
Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
David Malouf (Australia)
Dacia Maraini (Italy)
Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada)
Philip Pullman (UK)
Marilynne Robinson (USA)
Philip Roth (USA)
Su Tong (China)
Anne Tyler (USA)