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Pembroke Born Sarah Waters Heads
2006 Man Booker Prize Short List

Kiran Desai, Kate Grenville, M.J. Hyland, Hisham Matar, Edward St Aubyn and Sarah Waters are the six authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006, the UK’s pre–eminent literary award.  The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, Hermione Lee, at a press conference at Man Group plc offices in London on Thursday 14th September.
 
The six shortlisted books were chosen from a long list of 19 and are:
                                     
Kiran Desai The Inheritance of Loss  (Hamish Hamilton)
Kate Grenville The Secret River  (Canongate)
M.J.  Hyland Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Hisham Matar In the Country of Men  (Viking)
Edward St Aubyn Mother’s Milk (Picador)
Sarah Waters The Night Watch (Virago)
 
Hermione Lee, Chair of Judges, comments:
 
“Each of these novels has what we as judges were most looking for, a distinctive original voice, an audacious imagination that takes readers to undiscovered countries of the mind, a strong power of story-telling and a historical truthfulness. Each of these novels creates a world you inhabit without question or distrust while you are reading, and a mood, an atmosphere, which lasts long after the reading is over.”

The winner receives £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six short listed authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.

The judging panel for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Hermione Lee (Chair), biographer, academic and a reviewer; Simon Armitage, poet and novelist; Candia McWilliam, award-winning novelist; critic Anthony Quinn; and actor Fiona Shaw.

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 10th October at an awards ceremony at the Guildhall, London.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
(Virago)
 
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger. Helen, clever, sweet, much loved, harbours a painful secret and Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly loyal to her brother, Duncan, an apparent innocent who has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways; war leads to strange alliances.
 
Sarah Waters was born in July 1966 in Neyland, Pembrokeshire and went to the University of Canterbury. Her first book, the Victorian lesbian novel Tipping the Velvet won a Betty Trask Award in 1999 and was adapted into a three part television serial, taking the same title, on BBC2 in 2002. Fingersmith, published in 2002 was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize as well as the Orange Prize. This was also televised as a serial on BBC1 in 2005. Sarah Waters lives in London.   
 
Article from the Man Booker Prize website: www.themanbookerprize.com

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