Dubai-based author Avni Doshi’s debut novel Burnt Sugar has been named in the 2020 Booker Prize longlist of 13 authors.
The “Booker Dozen”, as it is known, was unveiled on Tuesday with judges evaluating 162 novels published in the UK or Ireland between October 2019 and September 2020.
The shortlist of the final six will be determined by September in time for the GBP 50,000 prize in November.
Born in the United States, Doshi now lives in Dubai. Her first novel was released in India last year as Girl in White Cotton and is releasing in the UK this week as Burnt Sugar.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize is recognised as the leading prize for literary fiction written in English. The Booker Prize for Fiction is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK or Ireland. The shortlist will be announced on September 15, with each shortlisted author receiving GBP 2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book at the prize ceremony scheduled for November.
The 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction was won jointly by The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo.
The full Booker Prize 2020 longlist:
- The New Wilderness by Diane Cook (Oneworld Publications)
- This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Faber & Faber)
- Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House)
- Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze (4th Estate, HarperCollins)
- The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate, HarperCollins)
- Apeirogon by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury Publishing)
- The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste (Canongate Books)
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
- Real Life by Brandon Taylor (Originals, Daunt Books Publishing)
- Redhead by The Side of The Road by Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
- Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador, Pan Macmillan)
- Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward (Corsair, Little, Brown)
- How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang (Virago, Little, Brown)