“That’s what I really loved trying for in this book, making space for the reader to enter into the making of the book,” she says. “There’s a privacy in the exchange between a reader and a writer that is unmediated and unaffected by sort of outside distraction. And that’s what I value in reading.”

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In January, Wood became the first Australian long-listed for the prize since J.M. Coetzee in 2016. Past Australian winners include Thomas Keneally, Richard Flanagan, Peter Carey (twice), D.B.C. Pierre and Australian-raised Aravind Adiga. No Australian woman has ever won the Booker, though Kate Grenville, Gail Jones and Madeleine St John have been nominated.

In a first, five of the six finalists for the $98,000 award are women: American writer Percival Everett – nominated for James, which reimagines Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of its main black character, the enslaved man Jim – is the only male.

Also shortlisted is American Rachel Kushner – a former Booker finalist with her bestseller The Mars Room – with spy story Creation Lake. Britain’s Samantha Harvey is shortlisted for Orbital, Canada’s Anne Michaels for Held and Dutch author Yael van der Wouden for her debut, The Safekeep.

Organisers said the stories transport readers from World War I battlefields to America’s Deep South in the 19th century to the International Space Station.

“Here is storytelling in which people confront the world in all its instability and complexity. The fault lines of our times are here,” said author Edmund de Waal, who chairs this year’s five-member judging panel. “They are books that made us want to keep on reading, to ring up friends and tell them about them.”

The winner will be announced on November 12 at a ceremony in London.

With AP

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