UK trio shortlisted for top book prize

Published on Friday 13 April 2007 00:11

THREE British authors have been shortlisted for this year's Man Booker International Prize.

Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing and Ian McEwan are all nominated for the biannual prize for a body of work in fiction.

The Albanian writer Ismail Kadare beat literary giants, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Philip Roth, to win the 60,000 inaugural prize two years ago.

This year, the list of 15 shortlisted authors includes Australian-born Peter Carey, Ireland's John Banville and Canadian Margaret Atwood.

Lessing's

most recent fictional work, The Cleft, the mythological story of women who live free from sexual intrigue and men, bearing only female children, was published this year.

McEwan's newest work, On Chesil Beach, published this year, has received warm reviews, while Shalimar the Clown (2005), the last novel by Satanic Verses author Rushdie, failed to impress the critics.

Other authors on this year's short list are Chinua Achebe, John Banville, Don DeLillo, Carlos Fuentes, Harry Mulisch, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Amos Oz and Michel Tournier.