Inside the World of Judging the Man Booker Prize | Literary Hub

"Having experienced a year in the life of the literary novel was so immersive," says writer, critic and academic Jon Day, one of this year's judges. "What's interesting is that what's emerged from that process hasn't been at all predictable. We managed to find extraordinary books by relatively unknown authors (other than Levy)." This year, the shortlist of six has seen a mix of authors published by big and small presses, all showing a unique openness to the world, and all arguably less well-known than other, bigger names published this year (the most mainstream author of the longlist, J.M. Coetzee, didn't make it to the final list).