The Man Booker Prize is given to a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland for the best novel of the year. Today six books, chosen from the long list of nineteen books, were announced as finalists for this prestigious award. The short list authors will gain worldwide attention and increased book sales, and the winner, to be announced on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, will take home the prize of 50,000 pounds.

The six books are:

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
In the north-eastern Himalayas, at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga, in an isolated and crumbling house, there lives an embittered old judge, who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and the son of his chatty cook trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy.

Kiran Desai was born in India in September 1971, and was educated in India, England and the United States. She is the daughter of the author, Anita Desai, who herself has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. Kiran Desai’s first book was Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998) which went on to win a Betty Trask Award. She is currently a student in Columbia University's creative writing course.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville
William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake for which he and his family are made to pay for dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. On arrival in this harsh and alien land, William takes a hundred acres of land for himself and is shocked to find aboriginal people are already living on the river.

Kate Grenville was born in Sydney in October 1950 and spent seven years in Europe and the USA working and studying. She holds degrees from the University of Sydney and the University of Colorado and has worked as a film editor, journalist, typist and teacher. Her novels include The Idea of Perfection (2002) which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001. The Secret River won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2006. Grenville has also written two non-fiction books and currently lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.

Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland
John Egan has an unusual talent: he knows when people are lying. He hopes that one day this gift will bring him fame and guarantee his entry into the Guinness Book of World Records, but until then, he must deal with the destructive undercurrents of his loving but fragile family. However, John’s obsession with uncovering the truth soon becomes a violent and frightening fixation.

M.J. Hyland was born in London to Irish parents in June 1968. She spent her early childhood in Dublin and when she was eleven the family relocated to Australia and settled in Melbourne. Hyland worked as a lawyer for six years after completing an Arts/Law degree at the University of Melbourne in 1996. Her first novel How the Light Gets In (2004) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and she has also won the Sydney Morning Herald Award for Best Australian Novelist (2004). She currently lives and works in Manchester.

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (call library to request)
On a white hot day in Tripoli in the summer of 1979 nine year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business - but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses. But why isn’t he waving? And why doesn’t he come over when he knows Suleiman’s mother is falling apart? Whispers and fears intensify around Suleiman and he begins to wonder whether his father has disappeared for good.

Hisham Matar was born in New York in November 1970 and spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo before moving back to Britain. He studied architecture at Goldsmith’s College and in 1990, when he was a student, his father - a Libyan dissident living in Cairo - was kidnapped, taken back to Tripoli, imprisoned and tortured and there has been no word since 1995. In the Country of Men is his first novel. Matar has lived in London since 1986.

Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn
The Melrose family is in peril. From young Robert, who provides an exceptionally droll account of being born, to Patrick, a hilariously churlish husband who has been sexually abandoned by his wife in favour of motherhood, to Mary, who is consumed both by her children and by an overwhelming desire not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother, St Aubyn uncovers the web of false promises that entangle this once illustrious family.

Edward St. Aubyn was born in 1960 in a part of Cornwall that has been inhabited by the St Aubyns since the Norman conquest. He was raped by his father as a child, abuse which continued until, at the age of eight, he confronted him. At the age of sixteen, he became a heroin addict and this habit continued at Oxford University. At twenty eight, he contemplated suicide but desperately wanted to write so sought the help of a therapist. In talking through the events in his life, he won a kind of freedom and was able to finally use the material to devastating effect in his fiction.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger. Helen, clever, sweet, much loved, harbours a painful secret and Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly loyal to her brother, Duncan, an apparent innocent who has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways; war leads to strange alliances.

Sarah Waters was born in July 1966 in Neyland, Pembrokeshire and went to the University of Canterbury. Her first book, the Victorian lesbian novel Tipping the Velvet won a Betty Trask Award in 1999 and was adapted into a three part television serial, taking the same title, on BBC2 in 2002. Fingersmith, published in 2002 was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize as well as the Orange Prize. This was also televised as a serial on BBC1 in 2005. Sarah Waters lives in London.

---from The Man Booker Prize Press Office