Booker Prize 2023 Longlist: Scottish author Martin MacInnes included in 13-strong longlist for prestigious literary award

This year’s list of the best fiction novels of the past 12 months has been unveiled.

Scottish author Martin MacInnes has been longlisted for this year's Booker Prize.

This year's Booker Prize shortlist includes a record 10 writers who have not been longlisted before, including four debut novels.

It's a global selection with writers from seven countries across four continents represented, with a record four Irish writers included.

And there’s Scottish interest with Martin MacInnes making the shortlist with his third novel 'In Ascension'.

It’s the latest success for the acclaimed novelist whose novel 'Infinite Ground' won the Somerset Maugham Award.

Meanwhile Canadian wroter and scholar Sarah Bernstein, who lives and teaches in the Scottish Highlands, also makes the cut with 'Study for Obedience'.

The prize, initially named after sponsor company Booker, McConnell Ltd, was established in 1969 has become one of the world’s richest literary prizes, with a cash prize of £50,000.

Previous winners have included Iris Murdoch, William Golding, Salman Rushdie, Kingsley Amis, Peter Carey, Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, and Hilary Mantel.

Originally it was only open to novels written in English by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African (and later Zimbabwean) authors, but in 2014 was opened up to all English-language fiction books.

The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 21, with the winner announced at an event at Old Billingsgate, London, on November 26.

The judges, who read 169 books to come up with the longlist, are novelist Esi Edugyan (chair), actor, writer and director Adjoa Andoh, poet and lecturer Mary Jean Chan, suthor and academic James Shapiro, and actor and writer Robert Webb, actor and writer

The full longlist is as follows:

• Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: A Spell of Good Things (Canongate)
• Sebastian Barry: Old God’s Time (Faber & Faber)
• Sarah Bernstein: Study for Obedience (Granta Books)
• Jonathan Escoffery: If I Survive You (4th Estate)
• Elaine Feeney: How to Build a Boat (Penguin Random House/Harvill Secker)
• Paul Harding: The Other Eden (Penguin Random House/Hutchinson Heinemann)
• Siân Hughes: Pearl (Indigo Press)
• Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow: All the Little Bird-Hearts (Hachette/Tinder Press)
• Paul Lynch: Prophet Song (Oneworld)
• Martin MacInnes: In Ascension (Atlantic Books)
• Chetna Maroo: Western Lane (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
• Paul Murray: The Bee Sting (Penguin Random House/Hamish Hamilton)
• Tan Twan Eng: The House of Doors (Canongate)