2012 Man Booker Prize shortlist announced

Previous Man Booker winner Hilary Mantel is on the shortlist for her historical novel Bring up the Bodies, the long-awaited follow-up to Wolf Hall which won the prize in 2009.

Will Self’s daring and wildly imaginative Umbrella has been selected, alongside Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, a powerfully subversive story of a week-long holiday during which the effects of depression leave the characters sorely tested.

Indian poet and novelist Jeet Thayil has made the shortlist with Narcopolis his evocative, narcotic-fuelled trip through a Bombay opium den. Narcopolis is one of two debut novels on the shortlist and it also features in the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s award for new novelists – the Anobii First Book Award.

Tan Twan Eng and Alison Moore complete the Man Booker Prize shortlist with The Garden of Evening Mists and The Lighthouse respectively.

The 2012 Man Booker Prize winner will be revealed on Tuesday 16 October.