Two Canadians Shortlisted for Man Booker

Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt will find out Oct. 18 if they're getting the $80,000 prize.

Two Canadian authors have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, joining four British writers for one of the literary world's most prestigious prizes. The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick deWitt, and Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues both made the cut, and now the two Vancouver Island authors face off for the $80,000 prize. DeWitt's novel takes a look at a family out on the American frontier in the 19th century, while Half Blood Blues, which you can read about in more depth here, follows the life of a black German trumpeter in Nazi Germany (spoiler alert: things don't go so well). This is the first time on the Man Booker list for both authors, but they'll be facing Julian Barnes' The Sense of An Ending, Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie, Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English, and A.D. Miller's Snowdrops. We haven't read any of them, but last year's winner, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, was a total riot, so yeah, these Booker judges tend to know what they're doing.

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