Congratulations are in order to Oyinkan Braithwaite, Chigozie Obioma, and Bernardine Evaristo, three Nigerian authors who have made it to the 2019 Booker Prize longlist, which was announced yesterday. Braithwaite’s debut novel My Sisiter, the Serial Killer has received a lot of praise and acclaim in the literary world. An Orchestra of Minorities is Obioma’s second novel after the widely acclaimed The Fishermen and Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other is coming off the back of a slew of literary offerings from the British-Nigerian writer.

Other notable authors on the longlist include:

• Margaret Atwood (Canada), The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
• Kevin Barry (Ireland), Night Boat to Tangier (Canongate Books)
• Lucy Ellmann (USA/UK), Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
• Bernardine Evaristo (UK), Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
• John Lanchester (UK), The Wall (Faber & Faber)
• Deborah Levy (UK), The Man Who Saw Everything (Hamish Hamilton)
• Valeria Luiselli (Mexico/Italy), Lost Children Archive (4th Estate)
• Max Porter (UK), Lanny (Faber & Faber)
• Salman Rushdie (UK/India), Quichotte(Jonathan Cape)
• Elif Shafak (UK/Turkey), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World(Viking)
• Jeanette Winterson (UK), Frankissstein(Jonathan Cape)

The Booker Prize (formerly the Man Booker Prize) is a £50,000 prize awarded to the best novel written in the English Language. Until 2014, it was awarded to only novels written by writers from the Commonwealth, Irish, South African and Zimbabwe. Nigerian magical realism writer Ben Okri won the prize in 1991 for his novel The Famished Road

Bernard Dayo

When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.