One of the more interesting aspects about this year's Man Booker Prize long list is the absence of an Irish writer.
The conservative list, set to inspire neither thrills nor pistols at dawn, which was announced in London yesterday, consists of 19 novels by writers from Britain, Australia and other Commonwealth countries, including the 1991 Nobel Literature Laureate, South African Nadine Gordimer, and US-born Claire Messud, who is now a British citizen, with The Emperor's Children.
Gordimer, who shared the 1974 Booker prize looks well placed with her sharp post-apartheid narrative Get A Life, in a selection which is strongly British and includes the fancied Howard Jacobson.
It also features several of the current younger generation of favoured British writers such as Edward St Aubyn, along with previously Booker short-listed Irish- based David Mitchell and Sarah Waters.
Also there is the previously Booker longlisted Jon McGregor with his first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, whose second, the newly published So Many Ways to Begin suggests he is a man with a flair for catchy titles.
The Australian contingent is well represented by a double Booker winner, Peter Carey, longlisted for Theft, not the best of his works, but sufficiently graced by his style to impress any judging panel.
Even more exciting, though, is the inclusion as expected of Kate Grenville's moving historical saga The Secret River, which tells the story of an Englishman who, convicted of stealing bread, is deported to Australia where he makes a life.
Also longlisted is a former joint winner of the Best Young Australian Novelist of the Year award, MJ Hyland, who is the London-born daughter of Irish parents.
Educated in Australia, she is now back in London and her novel, Carry Me Down, is about an Irish man who can detect lies.
Among the major omissions are JG Ballard's Kingdom Come, Romesh Gunesekera's The Match and the Scots writer Louise Welsh's The Bullet Trick.
Victory looks set for Manchester-born Howard Jacobson's Kalooki Nights in which the narrator confronts his story and also that of the Jewish experience in England. Here is Booker at its most solid.
