www.themanbookerprize.com

The judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today, Tuesday 27 July, announce the longlist for the prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world.

A total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the 'Man Booker Dozen' longlist of 13 books.

The longlist includes:

Author                                    Title (Publisher)

Peter Carey                            Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue                   Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen   Dunmore                     The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut                        In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson                   The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy                           The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy                       C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David   Mitchell                        The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

Lisa Moore                              February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray                            Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain                         Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas                     The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner                            The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

The chair of judges, Andrew Motion, comments:

"Here are thirteen exceptional novels - books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain."

Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang.  In 1985 his book Illywhacker was shortlisted for the prize and Theft: A Love Story was longlisted in 2006.

Three authors have been shortlisted before: David Mitchell (twice shortlisted in 2001 for number9dream and in 2004 for Cloud Atlas), Damon Galgut (in 2003 for The Good Doctor) and Rose Tremain (shortlisted in 1989 for Restoration). She was also a judge for the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2000.

Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for his book Kalooki Nights in 2006 and for Who's Sorry Now? in 2002.

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September at a press conference at Man Group's London headquarters.  The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC Ten O'Clock News.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will receive £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition.  Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

For further information about the prize please visit www.themanbookerprize.com

For all press enquiries please contact

Lucy Chavasse or Jill Cotton at Colman Getty

Tel: 020 7631 2666

E-mail: lucy@colmangetty.co.uk or jill@colmangetty.co.uk

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The Judges

Andrew Motion (Chair) is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London and co-founder of the online Poetry Archive.  He was Poet Laureate from 1999 until 2009. He has received numerous awards for his writing.  His group study, The Lamberts, won the Somerset Maugham Award and his authorised life of Philip Larkin won the Whitbread Prize for Biography.  His most recent collection of poetry is The Cinder Path, which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. Andrew Motion was knighted for his services to literature in 2009.

Rosie Blau is Literary Editor of the Financial Times.  Educated at Cambridge and Harvard, she has been a journalist for the past decade, writing for a variety of publications in the UK and US.  She joined the Financial Times in 2003 and has worked as a columnist, arts editor and news editor.

Deborah Bull was a dancer and is now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster.  She danced with The Royal Ballet from 1981 to 2001, the last 10 years as Principal Dancer.  Deborah's books include Dancing Away, a diary of 1998/9.   For three years she contributed a weekly column to the Daily Telegraph.  She broadcasts regularly, including writing and presenting the landmark series for BBC2, The Dancer's Body, in 2002.  She was a member of Arts Council England between 1998 and 2005 and served as a Governor of the BBC between 2003 and 2006.  In 1999 she was awarded a CBE.

Tom Sutcliffe is an author, broadcaster and journalist.  He studied English at Cambridge before joining the BBC where he has since presented A Good Read, Saturday Review and Round Britain Quiz. He was editor of Kaleidoscope, Radio Four's long-running predecessor to Front Row.  He helped launch The Independent newspaper as its arts editor and still writes for the paper as a television reviewer and columnist.  A BBC 2 series, Watching, was based on his book about cinema.

Frances Wilson has a PhD in Henry James and lectured in English Literature for 15 years before becoming a freelance writer. She is author of Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers; The Courtesan's Revenge: Harriette Wilson, the Woman who Blackmailed the King and The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, which won the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature and is currently writing a biography of J Bruce Ismay, chairman of the company that owned the ill-fated trans-Atlantic liner, the 'Titanic'.

Notes to Editors:

• The 2010 longlist consists of 13 books. The rules state that a longlist of twelve or thirteen books - 'The Man Booker Dozen' - are selected, followed by a shortlist of six. Each year UK publishers may submit two full-length novels published between 1 October 2009 and 30 September 2010 and in addition any title by an author who has previously won the Booker or Man Booker Prize may be submitted. Any book by an author who has been shortlisted within the last ten years is also entitled to automatic entry.

• The Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969, and Man was announced as the sponsor of the prize in April 2002, with a five year extension agreed in 2006. For a full history of the prize including previous winners, shortlisted authors and judges visit the website: www.themanbookerprize.com. It is a major media and information tool which is accessed worldwide with up to the minute information about both the annual prize and the biennial Man Booker International Prize. Featuring news, interviews and written pieces as well as a lively forum and full history archive of the prize, the site is used by journalists, bloggers and general members of the public on a daily basis.

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and has gone on to sell over half a million copies in the UK alone. The paperback topped the mass market fiction bestseller lists within a week of publication - a first for a Man Booker winner.

• The Advisory Committee, which advises on any changes to the rules and on the selection of the judges, represents all sides of the book world. Its members are: Ion Trewin, Chair (Literary Director, Man Booker Prizes); Richard Cable, publisher; Mark Chilton, Company Secretary, Booker Ltd; Peter Clarke, Chief Executive, Man; Jonathan Douglas, Director of the National Literacy Trust; Maggie Fergusson, writer and Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature; Basil Comely, BBC TV; Derek Johns, literary agent; Peter Kemp, Chief Fiction Reviewer, The Sunday Times; Dominic Myers, Managing Director of Waterstone's; Nigel Newton, publisher; Fiammetta Rocco, literary editor, The Economist (Man Booker International Prize administrator); Eve Smith (Company Secretary, the Booker Prize Foundation); and Robert Topping; Topping & Company Booksellers.

• The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity (no 1090049) which, since 2002, has been responsible for the award of the prize. The trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation are former Chairman of Booker plc, Jonathan Taylor CBE (Chair); Lord Baker of Dorking CH; playwright and President of the Royal Literary Fund, Ronald Harwood CBE; former Chair of the British Council, Baroness Kennedy QC; broadcaster, James Naughtie; biographer, Victoria Glendinning; writer, Baroness Neuberger DBE and former Finance Director of Rentokil plc, Christopher Pearce. Martyn Goff CBE, former Man Booker Prize administrator, is President of the Foundation and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is a Vice President.

• The Man Booker Prize is sponsored by Man, a world-leading alternative investment management business. With a broad range of funds for institutional and private investors globally, it is known for its performance, innovative product design and investor service. Man manages around$39 billion.

The original business was founded in 1783. Today, Man is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index with a market capitalisation of around £4 billion.

Man is a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and the FTSE4Good Index. Man also supports many awards, charities and initiatives around the world, including sponsorship of the Man Booker literary prizes.

Further information can be found at www.mangroupplc.com 

• Booker is the UK's leading food wholesaler with over 170 branches nationwide. It serves over 350,000 independent businesses.

• The Booker Prize Archive was given on loan in 2003 to Oxford Brookes University where it now resides.

• Blind and partially sighted people can now read any of the books shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize on the day the winner is announced. The production of the books in braille and giant print is funded by the Booker Prize Foundation, and the Man Group PLC Charitable Trust pays separately for the production of Talking Books.

• The Foundation is also working with the Sound Archive of the British Library onits 'National Life Stories - Authors' Lives' project by funding archive interviews withshortlisted authors.