Not The Booker Prize

Every year The Guardian newspaper in the UK run a Not The Booker Prize competition in parallel to the office Booker Prize process. Through a judging panel, reader nominations and a public vote the aim is to find best book from those that failed to make the official Booker longlist, but would have been eligible.

The Guardian have now released their longlist for 2014 (and boy is it a long list!). Here it is and voting is now opening to select the six shortlisted books. Voting is open until midnight (UK time) on 3 August. You can vote for two different books, providing they are by two different authors and from two separate publishers.

Mark Alder - Son of the Morning (Gollancz)
Louis Armand - Cairo (Equus)
Maurizio Ascari - Faded Letters (Patrician Press)
Edward St Aubyn - Lost For Words (Picador)
Nicholson Baker - Travelling Sprinkler (Serpent's Tail)
Nicola Barker - In the Approaches (Fourth Estate)
Susan Barker - The Incarnations (Doubleday)
Sue Barnard - The Ghostly Father (Crooked Cat Publishing)
Sebastian Barry - The Temporary Gentleman (Faber)
Hannah Beckerman - The Dead Wife's Handbook (Penguin)
Lauren Beukes - Broken Monsters (HarperCollins)
Ned Beauman - Glow (Sceptre)
James Benmore - Dodger of the Dials (Heron books)
Tony Black - The Last Tiger (Cargo Publishing)
Robin Black - Life Drawing (Picador)
Joanna Bolouri: My Year of Sexual Adventures - The List (Quercus)
Joseph Boyden - The Orenda (Oneworld)
SJ Bradley - Brick Mother (Dead Ink)
Carys Bray - A Song For Issy Bradley (Hutchinson)
Jessie Burton - The Miniaturist (Picador)
Noah Cicero - Go To Work and Do Your Job. Care For Your Children. Pay Your Bills. Obey The Law. Buy Products. (Eraserhead Press)
Jennifer Clement - Prayers For The Stolen (Hogarth)
Julian Cope - 131 (Faber)
Mark Z Danielewski - The Fifty Year Sword (Cargo)
Rene Denfeld - The Enchanted (W&N)
Lucy Duggan - Tendrils (Peer Press)
PS Duffy - The Cartographer of No Man's Land (Liveright)
Doug Durst & JJ Abrams - S. (Canongate)
Dave Eggers - The Circle (Hamish Hamilton)
Rhian Elizabeth - Six Pounds Eight Ounces (Seren)
Juliet Escoria - Black Cloud (Civil Coping Mechanisms)
Roopa Farooki - The Good Children (Tinder Press)
Karen Fielding - American Sycamore (Seren Books)
Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Chatto & Windus)
Matthew Francis - The Book Of The Needle (Cinnamon Press)
Anna Freeman - The Fair Fight (W&N)
Damon Galgut - Arctic Summer (Atlantic)
Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (Telegram)
Lesley Glaister - Little Egypt (Salt)
Bradley Greenburg - When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (Sandstone)
Nicola Griffith - Hild (Farrar Strauss and Giroux)
Xiaolu Guo - I Am China (Chatto & Windus)
Nick Harkaway - Tigerman (William Heinemann)
Emma Healey - Elizabeth Is Missing (Viking)
J Paul Henderson - Last Bus To Coffeeville (No Exit Press)
Charlie Hill - Books (Tindal Street)
Carly Holmes - The Scrapbook (Parthian)
Anna Hope - Wake (Doubleday)
Kerry Hudson - Thirst (Chatto & Windus)
Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World (Sceptre)
Heidi James - Wounding (Bluemoose)
Cynan Jones - The Dig (Granta)
Gabriel Josipovici - Hotel Andromeda (Carcanet Press)
Meena Kandasamy - The Gypsy Goddess (Atlantic)
Balraj Khanna - Indian Magic (Hoperoad)
Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake (Unbound)
Charles Lambert - With a Zero at Its Heart (The Friday Project)
Malcolm Mackay - The Sudden Arrival of Violence (Pan Macmillan)
Anneliese Mackintosh - Any Other Mouth (Freight Books)
Valerie Martin - The Ghost Of Mary Celeste (W&N)
Laura McBride - We Are Called To Rise (Simon & Schuster)
Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Viking)
Grace McCleen - The Professor Of Poetry (Sceptre)
David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks (Sceptre)
Lisa Moore - Caught (Chatto and Windus)
Neel Mukherjee - The Lives Of Others (Chatto & Windus)
Benjamin Myers - Beastings (Bluemoose)
Michael Nath - British Story (Route Publishing)
Claire North - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (Orbit)
Jenny Offill - Dept. Of Speculation (Granta)
Laline Paull - The Bees (Fourth Estate)
Sarah Perry - After Me Comes The Flood (Serpent's Tail)
Richard Powers - Orfeo (Norton)
Gareth L Powell - Hive Monkey (Ack-Ack Macaque) (Solaris)
Zia Haider Rahman - In The Light Of What We Know (Picador)
Mahesh Rao - The Smoke Is Rising (Daunt Books)
Danny Rhodes - The Fan (Arcadia)
Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things (Fourth Estate)
Nikesh Shukla - Meatspace (The Friday Project)
Kathryn Simmonds - Love And Fallout (Seren)
Alex Smith - Devilskein and Dearlove (Arachne Press)
Richard Smyth - Wild Ink (Dead Ink)
James Smythe - No Harm Can Come To A Good Man (Borough Press)
Neil DA Stewart - The Glasgow Coma Scale (Corsair)
Simon Sylvester - The Visitors (Quercus)
Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (Little, Brown)
Lavie Tidhar - The Violent Century (Hodder & Stoughton)
Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues Of Men (Corsair)
Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda (Atlantic)
Dan Tyte - Half Plus Seven (Parthian)
Emma Jane Unsworth - Animals (Canongate)
Iman Verjee - In Between Dreams (Oneworld)
Willy Vlautin - The Free (Faber)
Tom Vowler - That Dark Remembered Day (Headline)
Sarah Waters - The Paying Guests (Virago)
Jemma Wayne - After Before (Legend Press)
Will Wiles - The Way In (Fourth Estate)
Naomi Wood - Mrs Hemingway (Picador)
Starr Wood - Once Upon A Timepiece (Bo Tree Books)

Thanks so much for posting this. Imagine being an author who's released a work of literary fiction this year and not on this list. It's like the party everyone was invited to except you.

Which is actually an interesting (?) thought. I'm on my way to a migraine, so too headachey to think, but what books did get left off? Can anyone think of any off the tops of their heads?

ETA: One day later: The Guardian calls this the "most democratic" book award. Books make the long list by reader nominations thru online comments, one being enough to get them on. The list is winnowed to a short list in the same way. That explains its length. Winners get a mug (truly!).

To answer Susan's question the book I'm currently reading, All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu, didn't make either the Booker Prize or the Not the Booker Prize longlist. It was published in the UK on June 5th, and it was first written in English. Mengestu was born in Ethiopia, emigrated to the US with his family at the age of two and has lived there since then, so his novel would have been eligible for either prize. I'm halfway through, and it's a great read so far.

>geocroc: Thank you for your effort to list the book titles.The competition organised by The Guardian, UK newspaper is really nice to these budding writers, are the writers mostly first-timers to the book fiction market.

I believe The Guardian book award is synonymous as the annual film award,Golden Globe to a much popular Oscar Award (Academy Adward).

The Guardian have given these writers exposure/oppurtunity and to reach to higher height of winning other book awards in the future.

Details: How to vote for short listing.

www.theguardian.com/books/bookblog

Search: not the book prize longlist shortlist

and click the link.

Confused -
the aim is to find best book from those that failed to make the official Booker longlist, but would have been eligible.

At a quick glance some of these have made the Booker longlist? :
Orfeo, The Lives of Others, The Bone Clocks

The Not the Booker Prize shortlist was announced last month:

Simon Sylvester – The Visitors
Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch
Tony Black – The Last Tiger
Louis Armand – Cairo
Iain Maloney – First Time Solo
Mahesh Rao – The Smoke Is Rising

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/06/not-the-booker-prize-2014...

Hardly an award but here goes

The Not the Booker shortlist 2015

Shame by Melanie Finn
The Artificial Anatomy of Parks by Kat Gordon
Fishnet by Kirstin Innes
Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh
Dark Star by Oliver Langmead
The Good Son by Paul McVeigh

Not the Booker prize 2015: Kirstin Innes wins with Fishnet

The Not the Booker shortlist 2016

Chains of Sand by Jemma Wayne
The Combinations by Louis Armand
The Less Than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote by Dan Micklethwaite
Walking the Lights by Deborah Andrews
what will remain: A harrowing and captivating war novel born out of the author's experiences of serving in Afghanistan by Dan Clements

Not the Booker prize 2016: Tiffany McDaniel wins with The Summer That Melted Everything

Not the Booker prize 2017 looks like this:

Not Thomas by Sara Gethin
Dark Chapter by Winnie M Li
The Ludlow Ladies’ Society by Ann O’Loughlin
The Threat Level Remains Severe by Rowena Macdonald
Man With a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

The first five books for The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize shortlist 2018 have been revealed today. The sixth book, which is being chosen by the judges, will be revealed early next week. They five chosen by Guardian readers are:

Raising Sparks by Ariel Kahn
Dark Pines by Will Dean
Sweet Fruit, Sour Land by Rebecca Ley
The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan
Sealed by Naomi Booth

Not the Booker Prize 2020 shortlist and winner:
Hashim & Family by Shahnaz Ahsan
Underdogs: Tooth and Nail by Chris Bonnello
The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
Akin by Emma Donoghue
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Hello Friend We Missed You by Richard Owain Roberts, Winner