The 2020 Booker Long List: The Fresh List in the Time of Solitude

2020 is a very strange time, probably, in this passing century, people from all over the world have been in a long solitude with anxiety from the beginning. On the event of the announcement of Booker prize long list on 28^th July, at midnight in London but in the very early morning in Dhaka, readers from around the world have got startled either before going to sleep or after getting up from the dreams when they have seen “The Booker Dozen” or the list of 13 finest fictions in English from October, 2019 to September, 2020 published in the UK/Ireland. Though it has already made a buzz that US eligibility has pushed the prize from English atmosphere to American milieu, this is the most surprising and versatile long list in the Booker history that more than half (8/13) of them are first appearance in the world of long-fiction, pages started from 192 (Redhead by the Side of the Road) to 912 (The Mirror & the Light), two of them are completing their decades-long trilogy, two of them are African origin (Ethiopia & Zimbabwe), two of them are Asian-origin US citizens (India & China), more than half (9/13) of them are women writes and half of them are people of color. Though the selection is not purposeful, it clearly notifies us how much it is emergent to accept the difference and to understand the other lives of the best of times and of the worst of times, past, present and future.

After reading the various rave reviews of all the long listed novels from eminent newspapers and journals listening interviews (some of them) on YouTube and reading available excerpts from on the respected imprints’ websites and on Amazon, “The Shadow Kings”, authored by Maaza Mengiste has drawn my immense interest most till now, a archival novel and a story of Ethiopian woman warrior’s both national and personal struggle, bravery, during the Italian invasion in 1935, she wanted to write the buried history of woman’s sacrifice in the voice of woman writer and unlocked new discourse like Toni Morrison did in 1970. As jury comments:

The Shadow King is a meticulously researched and lyrical novel, a beautifully constructed historical fiction of women in war. We were drawn into the story of Hirut, the lead character who has, until now, never been heard. It is a brave, noble, gripping book that would not have been written at any other point in history.

In praise of Shuggie Bain, my second most attractive, jury has written that “the book gives a vivid glimpse of a marginalized, impoverished community in a bygone era of British history. It’s a desperately sad, almost-hopeful examination of family and the destructive powers of desire.” The reason I am eager to read this book soon and write a well research review, as like The Shadow King, is its mundane and cruel traces of lives in Glasgow as an after-effect of Thatcher’s policy and the hopelessness and helpfulness between mother and son, so gripping and heart-wrenching.

The third one, obviously, Hilary Mantle’s, last installment of her monumental Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror & the Light’s “sly dialogue and exquisite description brings the Tudor world alive.” Though I have not read it yet, it will be as exquisite and magnificent as “Wolf Hall” (2009) and “Bring up the Bodies” (2012) were. Maybe it will give her the third Booker as a history breaker. The most inventive and experimental novel of this year is “Apeirogon” by previously long listed author Colum McCann, a dual citizen (Ireland/US) of either sides of Atlantic ocean, who has truly made the Brexit and entered his characters in the most turbulent twin cities -Palestine/Israel- in the middle east. The title and the fragmentary narrative, literally, portray whirling politics and human crisis.

As the year has taken the road, in long list selection, though which other have not walked yet, on that regard, I will pick, as a philosophy graduate, my subsequent pick will Sophie Ward’s “extremely original, genre-bending novel” Love and Other Thought Experiments, a novel that asks the most fundamental questions about mind, being and the meaning of live through a queer couple and the genre is also so new and path breaker in the Booker selection. The following pick is, “as natural as grass grows” commended Chinua Achebe, last part of another trilogy of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1988 novel “Nervous Conditions” that helped to shape the new world and the current title “This Mournable Body” is inspired by “Unmournable Bodies,” Teju Cole’s 2015 essay for the New Yorker, the book is an exploration of woman’s emotional trauma in pace with national transformation.

Motherhood in its various shades is the recurring theme in some of the long listed books like most passionate in The New Wilderness or most bitter sweet one in Shuggie Bain but Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar has crossed the limits of our expectations where she scratches a picture of most disturbing mother daughter relationship. The first line "I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure." drew my attention to read the line twice on Granta (online) the day before the long list is announced. This book took almost 7 years with repeated rejections to be published and Avni also experienced the damage & difficulty of motherhood in the meantime. Before being published in the UK, the novel was published in India in the name of Girl in White Cotton. Thus the book's construction is as interesting as her life

What will it feel like if you have a chance to go back to the original state of nature? Only literary imagination can give the inner eye to see the past as well the future. The theme of The New Wilderness written by Diane Cook, a debutante, reminds me of Coetzee's Michael K and his freedom in the wilderness. The novel poses a question of the world's sustainability and human conditions in it.

In the time of the California Gold Rush, the people also rushed from all over the world to find fortune with hope & greed but many of them last at the devastating & miserable ends. C Pam Zhang's debut novel How much of these Hills is Gold is another story of survival, abandonment, & human faults through the siblings 'Lucy & Sam, struggling to find the space to bury their demised father. It's not only the story of grave excavation but also the excavation of their relationship & history of their origin.

Though Emira experienced a huge humiliation in confusion & fury only because of the difference of shades of skin color between her and the toddler she was babysitting, and Alix, her employer, put immense interest on her only because of the difference of shades of skin color between them; though the whole story revolves around the racial tension before Floyd could not breath on record, like Emira, the story also investigate the development of women's identity (both black and white) which Kiley Reid has tried to show with such a humorous & satirical tone as like her title is Such a Fun Age.

His peers, Sally Rooney & Rachel Cusk, say that he is our 21st century's Baldwin. Brandon Taylor himself was living spellbind with Giovanni's Room and he decided to write Real Life to investigate the ontology of being black & queer. It's a campus-novel many said and in my view it's a story of self discovery and readjustment with the world around. Like Taylor, Polish-British debutante in his thirties Gabriel Krauze has also appeared on the list with his own real life of violence and anomaly that are known in the media but understand less. He is like a phoenix and a self created personality in this strange world of literature. Anne Tyler who shortlisted for both International Booker in 2011 and Booker Prize in 2015 is most senior author appeared with tech-hermit Mortimer who lived a so mundane and rigid life but suddenly his life started jerking when new and out of his routine started to happen in her 23^rd novel Redhead by the Side of the Road.

From 2014 I have adamantly been following the Booker prize long listed novels and predicting the finalists and lastly the winner. Though, in 2020, there are comparatively the least numbers of celebrated and seasons favorite authors, on the other hand, most of them are fresh, original, experimental auto fictions and archival narratives which I feel are arresting.

Essential Links:

https://thebookerprizes.com/booker-prize/news/closer-look-2020-booker-prize-longlist

https://oneworld-publications.com/the-new-wilderness-hb.html

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/This-Mournable-Body-by-Tsitsi-Dangarembga-author/9780571355518

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/317/317214/burnt-sugar/9780241441510.html

https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008374990/who-they-was/

https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007480999/the-mirror-and-the-light-the-wolf-hall-trilogy/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/apeirogon-9781526607904/

https://canongate.co.uk/books/3325-the-shadow-king-longlisted-for-the-booker-prize-2020/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/such-a-fun-age-9781526612151/

https://dauntbookspublishing.co.uk/book/real-life/

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1119013/redhead-by-the-side-of-the-road/9781784743475.html