Patricia Lockwood, author of No One Is Talking About This, is one of this year’s Booker Prize finalists. Gaby Wood, director of the Booker Prize Foundation, announced this year’s shortlist on Tuesday, whittling down the works of fiction from 13 to six. The Priestdaddy memoirist and poet’s debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, a “love letter to the infinite scroll,†is joined by A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam, The Promise by Damon Galgut, The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed, Bewilderment by Richard Powers, and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. “It feels as if I’ve been transported to one of the imaginary planets that I might have invented for Bewilderment,†Powers reacted to the news.
The year’s selections were chosen by historian and chair of the judging panel Maya Jasanoff, writer and editor Horatia Harrod, actor Natascha McElhone, twice Booker-shortlisted novelist and professor Chigozie Obioma, and writer and former archbishop Rowan Williams. The longlist was announced on July 27 and included Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Second Place by Rachel Cusk among others. The winner of the Booker Prize will be announced this November. Watch the entire announcement, with commentary from the judges, below.