The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the most prestigious literary award in Britain, was announced on Tuesday morning. The six finalists are: 

* “We Need New Names,” by NoViolet Bulawayo  In Bulawayo’s engaging and often disturbing semiautobiographical first novel, 10-year-old Darling describes, with childlike candor and a penetrating grasp of language, first, her life in Zimbabwe during its so-called Lost Decade and then her life as a teenager in present-day America. The childlike innocence with which she describes children playing the simplest of games and at the same time observing the slaughter of whites and blacks alike in Zimbabwe is chilling. But Darling's account of the wonderful life she expected in America is equally sad, how the outside thinks that America is this rich place but her aunt has to work two jobs to pay for a house for her sister left in Africa. We also see the frivolousness of her new life and yearning for her past and her friends. It is a story of many contradictions and contrasts. 

“The Luminaries,” by Eleanor Catton (Little, Brown/Granta) This astonishing historical novel opens in Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866, a gold mining town along the West Coast of the South Island. Founded two years previously, Hokitika is in the midst of a population boom, as prospectors, hoteliers and other businessmen have flocked there after news of its vast riches and promise of easy wealth has reached people living within and outside of New Zealand. One of those men is Walter Moody, a young Englishman who is trained in law but seeks gold to provide him with material comfort and the start of a new life. This book is fascinating on many levels. The story is told through the eyes of twelve men each corresponding to an astrological sign; there are twelve books and each is one half the size of the previous book; the story goes through different times moving back and forth; it is written in the style of books from the 1800's. It is also over 800 pages long and I am only a quarter of the way through but the reading goes fast.

“Harvest,” by Jim Crace (Nan A. Talese/Picador)  The order and calm of a preindustrial village in England is upset by a mysterious fire and the simultaneous appearance of three strangers. The insular community strikes out against the newcomers but turns on itself in a fit, literally, of witch hunting.

“The Lowland,” by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf/Bloomsbury) From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Namesake comes an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past death. The style of the author is curious, almost detached. The first part is almost a newspaper report following the brothers with little emotion involved.The narration is taken over by the woman who becomes the wife of both brothers.

* “A Tale for the Time Being,” by Ruth Ozeki (Viking/Canongate) In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Starting to read this one; so far so good. See the 2013 list for the complete review.

* “The Testament of Mary,” by Colm Toibin (Scribner/Penguin) A powerful imagining of how the death of Jesus might have been experienced by his mother -- if in fact his mother was a Judean peasant woman in the first century of the Roman Empire, and not the Queen of Heaven. This Mary is old, she is bitter, and she is very human.

The winner of the prize — which is open to writers from Britain, Ireland or one of the Commonwealth nations — will be named at a ceremony in London on Oct. 15. The winner will be awarded a cash prize of £50,000, or about $80,000.  Read more at: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/shortlist-for-man-booker-prize-for-fiction-announced/?partner=rss&emc=rss

I have read The Testament of Mary - which my Christian friends think is an abomination - and I thought it was beautiful (see my review on the 2013 Book List page or the guided reading exercise) and I have The Luminaries among my stack of books. I will have to see if I can get the rest and add them to my pile of unread books. It is growing even higher. And, in October the Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced. That is how I started reading Mario Vargas Llosa and Mo Yan. For some strange reason, The Harvest just doesn't appeal to me. My days of "lite" reading are over.