Two Irish writers feature in the Booker prize "longlist" which was published for the first time yesterday.
Eoin MacNamee and Ciaran Carson are among the 24 writers on the list from which a shortlist will be produced, for the award of the prestigious £21,000 sterling prize in October.
The chairman of the judging panel, Lord Baker, said they had decided to publish a longlist to demonstrate the range and quality of books submitted this year.
Other writers whose books will be considered include Melvyn Bragg, Nick Hornby and Ian McEwan.
The Booker Prize, now in its 33rd year, is awarded to the best novel of the year and is open to authors from Britain, the Commonwealth and Ireland.
The longlist is: Beryl Bainbridge, According to Queeney (Little Brown); Derek Beaven, If the Invader Comes (4th Estate); Melvyn Bragg, A Son of War (Sceptre); Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (Faber and Faber); Ciaran Carson, Shamrock Tea (Granta Books); Stevie Davies, The Element of Water (Women's Press); Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup (Bloomsbury); Patricia Grace, Dogside Story (Women's Press); Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea (Bloomsbury); Nick Hornby, How to be Good (Viking); Zvi Jagendorf, Wolfy and the Strudelbakers (Dewi Lewis Publishing); James Kelman, Translated Accounts (Secker & Warburg); Ian McEwan, An Atonement (Jonathan Cape); Eoin McNamee, The Blue Tango (Faber and Faber); Andrew Miller, Oxygen (Sceptre); David Mitchell, Number 9 Dream (Sceptre); Ferdinand Mount, Fairness (Chatto & Windus); V. S. Naipaul, Half a Life (Picador); Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass (Scholastic); Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room (William Heinemann); Ali Smith, Hotel World (Hamish Hamilton); Manil Suri, The Death of Vishnu (Bloomsbury); Jane Urquhart, The Stone Carvers (Bloomsbury); Marina Warner, The Leto Bundle (Chatto & Windus).