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Kelman and Naipaul are among nominees for Man Booker prize
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent18.03.09
JAMES Kelman and VS Naipaul are in the running for this year's £60,000 Man Booker International Prize, it was announced today.
The two contenders from Britain join a line-up including Australian Peter Carey, Mario Vargas Llosa from Peru and the Canadian doyenne of short stories Alice Munro.
America is the most represented nation with three authors in contention in EL Doctorow, Joyce Carol Oates and Evan S Connell, the oldest contender at 84.
But the list also includes writers that only the most literary Britons will know well. They include Mahasweta Devi from Bangladesh and Arnošt Lustic from Czech Republic, both aged 82. The youngest writer is Croatian Dubravka Ugresic, 59.
At 62, Glaswegian writer Kelman is the second youngest on the list.
But Britain's stronger chance of a win may lie with Naipaul, 76, already a Nobel Laureate who was knighted in 1989. He was born in Trinidad of Indian descent but has lived in Britain for the past six decades after originally coming to study English at Oxford.
Jane Smiley, the American author who is chairing the judges, said it was clear how "unusual and astonishing" the literary world was.
"We've all read books by authors we had never heard of before and have turned out to be some of the best books we've ever read," she said.
The winner will be announced in May with a ceremony on 25 June. A London writer who was a junior doctor before quitting for comedy has made the longlist for the £30,000 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Lissa Evans, 48, joins Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison on the 20-strong list for the book award which celebrates fiction written by women.
Evans has been nominated for Their Finest Hour And A Half about the efforts to make a morale-boosting film in wartime London with actors who are jaded and utterly unsuitable. The winner will be announced on 3 June.
