08 Aug 2011 01:43:33
A debut novel chronicling gang warfare in Peckham has joined efforts by a former Man Booker winner, Alan Hollinghurst, and Julian Barnes - the novelist many people mistakenly think must have won - on this year's longlist for the prestigious prize.
Stephen Kelman, who was a warehouseman, care worker and local government administrator before taking up writing in 2005, was longlisted for Pigeon English, one of the more eye-catching additions to a lineup that includes four first-time novelists.
The book, which draws on the murder of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor and for a time languished on a literary agency's slush pile, eventually became the subject of a bidding war last year before being picked up - shrewdly, as it turns out - by Bloomsbury.
The list is striking for its range of subject matter although, given that a former spymaster is in charge, a bit more intrigue might have been expected. But former MI5 director Dame Stella Rimington told the Guardian: "There is no espionage, no ... there are, though, two post-cold war books. Not because of me, but by general agreement."
It took judges around two hours to get the list down to 13 from the 138 books read. "We've had a lot of fun today," said Rimington. "It was an impassioned debate, but - without any acrimony and with a great deal of humour - we've come up with a longlist we're all pleased with.
"It is a list of considerable variety, not only in the subjects but in the range of authors."
Rimington admitted it had been "a weighty burden being a judge but also extremely enjoyable and entertaining."
The Man Booker's literary director Ion Trewin said: "This is my seventh prize and every year is different from the previous one. I'm particularly pleased to see four first novels and also unfamiliar publishers. That's great, because that's where the future is.
"[The longlist] seems to me to be as far-ranging in subject matter as I can recall. One of the things that's changed over the years is that it used to be very much, quote, 'literary fiction'. Now, if it's particularly good, what you might call genre [is] no bar to it being listed."
Evidence of that is DJ Taylor's Victorian mystery Derby Day, a book that could easily be called a thriller - a very rare thing on the Man Booker longlists.
The one book predicted by almost everyone is Alan Hollinghurst's sweeping tale of poetry, class and ambiguous sexual identities, The Stranger's Child. The author, who won seven years ago with his last novel, The Line of Beauty, was straight away installed as 5-1 favourite by William Hill.
His 584-page book is in stark contrast to second favourite Julian Barnes. A Man Booker bridesmaid, Barnes - shortlisted three times - makes the list with his 150-page offering, The Sense of an Ending.
