Irish novelist Anne Enright's The Green Road is among 13 novels in the running for the €70,700 (Stg£50,000) Man Booker Prize.
Enright won the prize in 2007 with The Gathering.
An epic 700-page re-telling of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley - Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings - and acclaimed US novelist Anne Tyler's A Spool Of Blue Thread are also on the list.
James’s book includes large sections written in Jamaican patois and covers the attempted murder of the reggae superstar in 1976 and the rise of the drug trade on the island.The writer, who currently lives in Minneapolis, is the first Jamaican-born novelist to be nominated.
The longlist has been chosen by the judges from 156 books.
This is the second year the prize has been open to writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the UK having previously been restricted to the UK and Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe.
The other US novels on the list are Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have A Family, Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account, Marilynne Robinson's Lila and Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life.
Tom McCarthy and Andrew O'Hagan feature again for their respective novels Satin Island and The Illuminations. Another UK writer, Sunjeev Sahota, is nominated for his second novel The Year Of The Runaways.
The list also includes The Fishermen by Nigerian Chigozie Obioma, Sleeping on Jupiter by Indian novelist Anuradha Roy and New Zealander Anna Smaill's The Chimes.
Michael Wood, who is chairing this year’s judging panel, said: “We had a great time choosing this list. Discussions weren’t always peaceful, but they were always very friendly. We were lucky in our companions and the submissions were extraordinary. The longlist could have been twice as long, but we’re more than happy with our final choice.
“The range of different performances and forms of these novels is amazing. All of them do something exciting with the language they have chosen to use.”
A shortlist of six books will be announced on September 15th with the winner revealed at a ceremony in London’s Guildhall on October 13th.
PA
The 2015 longlist, or Man Booker ‘Dozen’, of 13 novels, is:
Bill Clegg (US): Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape)
Anne Enright (Ireland): The Green Road (Jonathan Cape)
Marlon James (Jamaica): A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications)
Laila Lalami (US): The Moor’s Account (Periscope, Garnet Publishing)
Tom McCarthy (UK): Satin Island (Jonathan Cape)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria): The Fishermen (ONE, Pushkin Press)
Andrew O’Hagan (UK): The Illuminations (Faber & Faber)
Marilynne Robinson (US): Lila (Virago)
Anuradha Roy (India): Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Sunjeev Sahota (UK): The Year of the Runaways (Picador)
Anna Smaill (New Zealand): The Chimes (Sceptre)
Anne Tyler (US): A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus)
Hanya Yanagihara (US) A Little Life (Picador)
Booker facts and Figures
Irish winners:
JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur (1973). Farrell was also awarded "the Lost Booker Prize" in 2010 for his 1970 novel The Troubles. Due to a change in the rules no novel published in 1970 could win the Booker Prize
Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea (1978)
Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1983)
John Banville's The Sea (2005)
Anne Enright, The Gathering (2007)
First winner: PH Newby in 1969 who won with Something to Answer For.
Shortest book to win: Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore (1979) clocked in at 132 pages. In terms of length, the rules state that the judges must agree that a book is a "substantial work".
Longest book: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (2013) was a door-stopping 832 pages.
Youngest winner: Eleanor Catton was 28 when she won in 2013.
Women v men: 16 women and 30 men have taken the prize.
Multi-year winners: JM Coetzee (1983 for Life & Times of Michael K and 1999 for Disgrace); Peter Carey (1998 for Oscar and Lucinda and 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang). Hillary Mantel (2009 for Wolf Hall and 2012 for Bring Up the Bodies)
