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Africa makes Booker shortlist

Bitter Fruit is one of six titles shortlisted for the £50,000 Man Booker prize, to be awarded on October 19 2004.

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Two works from Africa are among the longlist of the prestigous Booker prize. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor are in the list of 22 books announced on August 26 2004.

Nigeria Adichie and South African Dangor were selected from the 132 entries. The 2004 shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 21 September. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 19 October at an awards ceremony in the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster, London.

Purple Hibiscus was published earlier in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Orange prize for women's fiction. Bitter Fruit was first published in South Africa by Kwela Books in 2001 and has been republished in the UK by Atlantic Books, coming out as a paperback in September 2004. Dangor was director of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and has published many novels and short stories in South Africa. He now works in Geneva for the United Nations.

Chair of the Booker prize judges, Chris Smith MP, says:
"This has been a very rich year for fiction and we have a strong and varied longlist of 22 books. I'm particularly pleased that there are a number of first or second novels on the list as well as a number of well-established writers. The list is a mixture of seriousness and fun; it ranges across several continents; it goes back and forwards in time; and getting a shortlist of six out of this variety will be a nightmare."

The judging panel for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Chris Smith MP (chair); novelist, Tibor Fischer; writer and academic, Robert Macfarlane; journalist and editor of The Erotic Review, Rowan Pelling and literary editor of The Economist, Fiammetta Rocco.

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2004 is as follows;

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus, 4th Estate
Nadeem Aslan, Maps for Lost Lovers, Faber & Faber
Nicola Barker, Clear: A Transparent Novel, 4th Estate
John Bemrose, The Island Walkers, John Murray
Ronan Bennett, Havoc, in its Third Year, Simon & Schuster
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Bloomsbury
Neil Cross, Always the Sun, Scribner
Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit, Atlantic Books
Louise Dean, Becoming Strangers, Scribner
Lewis Desoto, A Blade of Grass, Maia Press
Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo, Faber & Faber
James Hamilton-Paterson, Cooking with Fernet Branca, Faber & Faber
Justin Haythe, The Honeymoon, Picador
Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire, Virago
Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty, Picador
Gail Jones, Sixty Lights, Harvill Press
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, Sceptre
Sam North, The Unnumbered, Scribner
Nicholas Shakespeare, Snowleg, Harvill Press
Matt Thorne, Cherry, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Colm Tóibín, The Master, Picador
Gerard Woodward, I'll go to Bed at Noon, Chatto & Windus