On August 14 the judges of the 2006 Booker Prize announced a list of nineteen semifinalists. The annual prize, worth £50,000 (approximately $94,900), is sponsored by the Man Group investment company and is given for the best novel of the year by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland. This year’s judges are Simon Armitage, Hermione Lee, Candia McWilliam, Anthony Quinn, and Fiona Shaw.
The shortlist will be announced on September 14; the winner will be named on October 10.
The semifinalists, chosen from a field of 112 entries, are Peter Carey for Theft: A Love Story (Faber and Faber), Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton), Robert Edric for Gathering the Water (Doubleday), Nadine Gordimer for Get a Life (Bloomsbury), Kate Grenville for The Secret River (Canongate), M. J. Hyland for Carry Me Down (Canongate), Howard Jacobson for Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape), James Lasdun for Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape), Mary Lawson for The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto and Windus), Jon McGregor for So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury), Hisham Matar for In the Country of Men (Viking), Claire Messud for The Emperor’s Children (Picador), David Mitchell for Black Swan Green (Sceptre), Naeem Murr for The Perfect Man (William Heinemann), Andrew O’Hagan for Be Near Me (Faber and Faber), James Robertson for The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton), Edward St. Aubyn for Mother’s Milk (Picador), Barry Unsworth for The Ruby in Her Navel (Hamish Hamilton), and Sarah Waters for The Night Watch (Virago).
