Canadian author Margaret Atwood has picked up her fifth nomination for the Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards and one that she won three years ago.
Ms. Atwood made the shortlist of the Booker with her bleak view of the future in Oryx and Crake, a return to speculative fiction that offers an interpretation of what might happen if progress continued unchecked.
- Listen to Margaret Atwood read from Oryx and Crake
She won the Booker in 2000 for The Blind Assassin (and was nominated for Cat's Eye, Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale) but will face tough competition from the other five authors on the shortlist. They include:
- Bangladeshi native, Monica Ali is nominated for Brick Lane, her first novel and one that won her Granta's Best of Young British Novelists award before it was even published.
- South Africa novelist Damon Galgut for The Good Doctor, a look at his nation's post-apartheid period, as illustrated by an underfunded and remote rural hospital in the hinterland.
- Former Londoner Zoë Heller, now living in New York, for Notes on a Scandal, which chronicles a third-person's observations of an affair between a middle-aged pottery teacher and a 15-year-old pupil.
- Exeter native Clare Morrall, now living in Birmingham, for Astonishing Splashes of Colour, which tells the story of a woman whose loss presages desperation and breakdown, but also optimism.
- Vernon God Little, by Australian-born DBC Pierre, now living in Mexico, the first-person account of a Texas teenager who survives a school massacre and finds himself blamed for the killings.
The Booker Prize — sponsored by the Man Group, an investment firm — is open to authors from the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland. It was won last year by Canadian Yann Martel, for Life of Pi.
This year's award will be announced at the Great Hall of the British Museum on Oct. 14.
