Set in an unnamed city with unnamed characters, the novel focuses on middle sister as she “navigates her way through rumour, social pressures and politics in a tight-knit community.” About her own novel, Burns told the Man Booker website that “‘The book didn’t work with names. It lost power and atmosphere and turned into a lesser — or perhaps just a different — book. In the early days I tried out names a few times, but the book wouldn’t stand for it. The narrative would become heavy and lifeless and refuse to move on until I took them out again. Sometimes the book threw them out itself’.”
In a unanimous decision, Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Booker’s chair of judges, said the experimental novel—which is a novel about a young woman being sexually harassed by a powerful man—was “incredible original” and that “none of us has ever read anything like this before.”
Here are the authors that made this year’s short and long lists.
