Canadian author Sarah Bernstein longlisted for $84K Booker Prize
The thirteen books longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. (Booker Prizes)Canadian author Sarah Bernstein is among the 13 authors longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. The £50,000 (approx. $84,816 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best original novel written in the English language and published in the U.K.Study for Obedience is a novel by Sarah Bernstein. (Knopf Canada)Bernstein is longlisted for Study for Obedience.The novel explores themes of guilt, abuse and prejudice through the eyes of its unreliable narrator. In it, a woman leaves her hometown to move to a 'remote northern country' to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife recently decided to leave him. Soon after her arrival the community is struck by unusual events from collective bovine hysteria to a potato blight. When the locals direct their growing suspicions of incomers at her their hostility grows more palpable.Bernstein is a scholar and writer who was born in Montreal and now teaches literature and creative writin
Canadian author Sarah Bernstein is among the 13 authors longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
The £50,000 (approx. $84,816 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best original novel written in the English language and published in the U.K.
Bernstein is longlisted for Study for Obedience.
The novel explores themes of guilt, abuse and prejudice through the eyes of its unreliable narrator. In it, a woman leaves her hometown to move to a 'remote northern country' to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife recently decided to leave him. Soon after her arrival the community is struck by unusual events from collective bovine hysteria to a potato blight.
When the locals direct their growing suspicions of incomers at her their hostility grows more palpable.
Bernstein is a scholar and writer who was born in Montreal and now teaches literature and creative writing in Scotland. She was recently named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.
Among the other longlisted writers is Nigerian author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, who is nominated for her novel A Spell of Good Things.
A Spell of Good Things, is ambitious in scope, juxtaposing the stories of two families from very different circumstances, whose lives tragically intersect. It's been praised as a compelling "state-of-the-nation" saga, reflecting Nigerian society back to itself.
Adébáyọ̀ made a stunning debut with her 2017 novel, Stay with Me — a dramatic story about marriage, family and polygamy, love and loyalty, set against a time of political turmoil in Nigeria.
It was shortlisted for the U.K.'s Women's Prize for Fiction, the Wellcome Book Prize and other awards, named a best book of the year by the Guardian, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, NPR and others, and was translated into 20 languages.
This year's Booker Prize is chaired by two-time Booker-shortlisted Canadian author Esi Edugyan. She is joined on the judging panel by actor, writer and director Adjoa Andoh; poet, lecturer, editor and critic Mary Jean Chan; author and professor James Shapiro; and actor and writer Robert Webb.
"The list is defined by its freshness — by the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones. All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways. Their range is vast, both in subject and form: they shocked us, made us laugh, filled us with anguish, but above all they stayed with us," said Edugyan in a press statement.
‘All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time.’
We are delighted to reveal the #BookerPrize2023 longlist. Huge congratulations to the authors who make up this year's Booker Dozen.
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