Booker Prize 2019: Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie both make shortlist

Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among the six authors shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize.

Atwood is in contention again with The Testaments, her eagerly awaited follow-up to The Handmaid's Tale, while Sir Salman makes the cut with Quichotte.

Bernardine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma, Elif Shafak and US author Lucy Ellmann are also up for the prize.

Both Atwood and Rushdie have won the coveted prize before, in 2000 and 1981 respectively.

Atwood also made the shortlist with The Handmaid's Tale in 1986.

The Testaments, which is set 15 years after the end of that novel, will be officially published next week.

The winner, whittled down from 151 submissions and a longlist of 13, will be announced on 14 October.

The 2019 shortlist was announced on Tuesday at a press conference at the British Library in London.

"Like all great literature, these books teem with life, with a profound and celebratory humanity," said Peter Florence, chair of this year's judges.

Belfast-born author Anna Burns won last year's prize with her coming-of-age story Milkman.

Set 15 years after the enigmatic final scene of The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's much-anticipated follow-up is narrated by three female characters.

The original was set in a totalitarian state called Gilead where women are subjugated and enslaved by an oppressive patriarchal society.

The Handmaid's Tale was adapted for a film starring Natasha Richardson in 1990. More recently, it formed the basis for an Emmy-winning TV series starring Elisabeth Moss.

Canadian author Atwood, 79, won the 2000 Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin. She was also shortlisted for the prize in 1986, 1989, 1996 and 2003.

The Testaments will be published just after midnight on 10 September. Later that day, Atwood will talk about the book at a National Theatre event that will be shown in cinemas around the globe.

Florence, one of the few to have read the book, describes it as "a savage and beautiful novel that speaks to us today with conviction and power".

Born in Illinois in 1956 and now based in Edinburgh, Ellmann is the only US author on this year's shortlist.

Her novel, which runs to a whopping 998 pages, is a stream-of-consciousness monologue that is largely made up of one continuous sentence.

Its narrator is an Ohio housewife who reflects on her past, her family and her country while latticing cherry pies.

Judge Joanna MacGregor describes the book as "a genre-defying novel, a torrent on modern life [and] a hymn to loss and grief".

Ellmann's inclusion on the shortlist comes five years on from the controversial decision to make US authors eligible.

Paul Beatty become the first US recipient of the prize in 2016 with his racial satire The Sellout.

If Ducks, Newburyport also goes on to win, it will be the longest winning novel since 2013 winner The Luminaries.

Bookmaker Ladbrokes has made it 2/1 favourite to win this year's prize.

Born in London in 1959, Anglo-Nigerian author Evaristo has made the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time with her eighth book.

Described as a "fusion fiction" novel, Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of 12 characters, most of whom are black, British and female.

Judge Xiaolu Guo called it "an impressive, fierce novel... about modern Britain and womanhood" that "deserves to be read aloud".

Evaristo herself has said she aims to "explore the hidden narratives of the African diaspora" and "subvert expectations and assumptions".

Born in Nigeria in 1986 and now based in the US, Chigozie Obioma is the author of two novels that have both been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

His debut novel The Fishermen previously made the cut in 2015. It went on to inspire a 2018 stage adaptation that transfers to London's West End this week.

An Orchestra of Minorities tells the story of a young Nigerian chicken farmer whose love for a woman drives him to become an African migrant in Europe.

Told in the mythic style of the Igbo literary tradition, it is described by judge Afua Hirsch as "a book that wrenches the heart".

Sir Salman is no stranger to the Booker Prize. He won the award in 1981 with Midnight's Children and made the shortlist again in 1983, 1988 and 1995.

Midnight's Children went on to be judged the "Booker of Bookers" in 1993 and "Best of the Booker" in 2008.

Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, Quichotte tells of an ageing travelling salesman who drives across America to prove himself worthy of a TV star's hand.

Published last month, the novel - Rushdie's 12th - "pushes the boundaries of fiction and satire", according to jury chair Florence.

Born in India in 1947 and now based in New York, Rushdie is best known for his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which sparked widespread protests by Muslims and a fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

British-Turkish novelist Shafak was born in France in 1971 and has published 17 books, 11 of which are novels.

Set in Istanbul, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is made up of the recollections of a sex worker who has been left for dead in a rubbish bin.

Judge Liz Calder - a publisher and editor whose former colleagues include Sir Salman Rushdie - called the book "a work of fearless imagination".

Organisers have insisted the Booker Prize is free from nepotism and favouritism after concerns were raised over Calder's judging role.

by Rebecca Jones, BBC arts correspondent

After years of mounting criticism that the Booker Prize had become too worthy and dominated by American novelists, this shortlist is a welcome riposte.

First there are two literary heavyweights with Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie. Both enjoy critical and commercial success and have won the prize before.

There is only one American, Lucy Ellmann, who moved to England as a teenager and now lives in Scotland. Yet it is worth noting that a number of the books this year deal with the state of America.

After four years when the shortlist featured no writers from Africa, the Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma makes the cut for the second time.

Elif Shafak, who was born in Turkey, is shortlisted for a novel written in what is her second language.

Bernardine Evaristo completes a wide-ranging and ambitious line-up with a novel told in free verse. Don't be put off - it's glorious.

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