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Man-Booker Prize 3: And here it is...

The longlist comprises:

A S Byatt The Children's Book (Chatto)
J M Coetzee Summertime (Harvill Secker)
Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze (Jonathan Cape)
Sarah Hall How to Paint a Dead Man (Faber)
Samantha Harvey The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape)
James Lever Me Cheeta (Fourth Estate)
Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)
Simon Mawer The Glass Room (Little, Brown)
Ed O'Loughlin Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Penguin - Ireland)
James Scudamore Heliopolis (Harvill Secker)
Colm Toibin Brooklyn (Viking)
William Trevor Love and Summer (Viking)
Sarah Waters The Little Stranger (Virago)

I've read the Byatt, so I'm rooting for her currently. Many of the books have not yet been published in the U.S., so this further limits my vote. Coetzee's Summertime is being published in September or October, and that's a book I could get excited about - though he's won twice already, and perhaps someone new should get a try. Really, there's no time to read current contenders when there's still 12 or so past winners to read. Seems a hopeless business when you think about it.

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