Novels by McCarthy, Tyler, Obioma make Man Booker Prize shortlist

LONDON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Works by authors Marlon James, Tom McCarthy, Chigozie Obioma, Sunjeev Sahota, Anne Tyler and Hanya Yanagihara have been shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

The novels that are up for the prestigious literary award are James' A Brief History of Seven Killings, McCarthy's Satin Island, Obioma's The Fishermen, Sahota's The Year of the Runaways, Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread and Yanagihara's A Little Life.

The 2015 winner will be announced Oct. 13 in London's Guildhall at a black-tie dinner attended by the nominees and other luminaries from the literary world. The BBC will broadcast the ceremony.

This is the second year that the honor, first presented in 1969, has been open to writers of any nationality, writing originally in English and published in the United Kingdom. Previously, only authors from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible for the competition.

"Only on rare occasions does celebration come so closely aligned with regret. The regret of what we left out was tempered by the enormous excitement we have in presenting the six books on the shortlist," Michael Wood, chief of judges, said in a statement.

"We re-read all 13 books on the longlist and in the process we rediscovered new pleasures in each. The writers on the shortlist present an extraordinary range of approaches to fiction. They come from very different cultures and are themselves at very different stages of their careers."