[CaptainKidd]

The 2020 Booker Prize Shortlist:

Avni Doshi, 'Burnt Sugar'
Brandon Taylor, 'Real Life'
Douglas Stuart, 'Suggie Bain'
Diane Cook, 'The New Wilderness'
Maaza Mengiste, 'The Shadow King'
Tsitsi Dangarembga, 'The Mournable Body'

There are four debut novelists on the list; Diane Cook, Avni Doshi, Douglas Stuart, and Brandon Taylor. Apart from Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), all the authors are from the US or hold joint US citizenship. As a result, there will be continued controversy over the inclusion of US authors which began in 2014. Surprisingly, Hilary Mantel's novel 'The Mirror & The Light', did not make the shortlist. Mantel won the award for both of her earlier books in the Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell) Trilogy. Other notables not making the shortlist were Colum McCann for 'Apeirogon', and Anne Tyler for 'The Redhead on the Side of the Road'.

The winner will be named on 17 November 2020.

[CaptainKidd]

The novel "Shuggie Bain" by Douglas Stuart has won the 2020 Booker Prize. The novel follows a young boy growing up with a mother suffering from addiction issues in working-class Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s; and is only the second Scottish novel to win the Booker Prize, after James Kelman's "How Late It Was, How Late", which won in 1994.