Here's the just-released longlist for the coveted Man Booker Prize for Fiction, awarded to novels whose authors are from the Commonwealth and/or Ireland. Previous winners include Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. (The most buzzed-about novel on this year's list, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, involves cricket. New Yorker critic James Wood called it "one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read.")

Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold: Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry: The Secret Scripture
John Berger: From A to X
Michelle de Kretser: The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh: Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant: The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif: A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher: The Northern Clemency
Joseph O'Neill Netherland
Salman Rushdie The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith: Child 44
Steve Toltz: A Fraction of the Whole

Chair of Judges Michael Portillo said of this year's Man Booker Dozen, "The list covers an extraordinary variety of writing. Still two qualities emerge this year: large scale narrative and the striking use of humour."

[The Man Booker Prize Website]

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