Man Booker Prize shortlist is announced

 Novels by Joshua Ferris, Richard Flanagan, Karen Joy Fowler, Howard Jacobson, Neel Mukherjee and Ali Smith were shortlisted Tuesday for Britain's 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
The nominated works include Ferris' To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Jacobson's J, Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others and Smith's How to be Both.
The winner will be revealed at a ceremony at London's Guildhall Oct. 14.
"We are delighted to announce our international shortlist," A.C. Grayling, chair of the 2014 judges' panel, said in a statement.
"As the Man Booker Prize expands its borders, these six exceptional books take the reader on journeys around the world, between the U.K., New York, Thailand, Italy, Calcutta and times past, present and future. We had a lengthy and intensive debate to whittle the list [of 13] down to these six. It is a strong, thought-provoking shortlist, which we believe demonstrates the wonderful depth and range of contemporary fiction in English."
Organizers noted this is the first roster to "reflect the diversity of the novel in English, regardless of the author's nationality, as the Man Booker Prize has opened up to any author writing originally in English and published in the U.K. Previously, the prize was open to authors from the U.K. and Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe."
Canadian-born, New Zealand author Eleanor Catton became the youngest Man Booker winner in the prize's history last year. Catton was 27 when she penned her award-winning book The Luminaries, which is set in 1866 during the New Zealand gold rush. The 832-page work is also the longest novel to win the Man Booker Prize.