"Contemporary" longlist for 2013 Man Booker

The longlist for the 2013 Man Booker Prize has been announced, with two nominations apiece for Picador and Bloomsbury.

Jim Crace's Harvest and Richard House's digital-first The Kills (Picador) have both been longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction, alongside Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland and Colum McCann's TransAtlantic (both Bloomsbury). Crace, the oldest author on the longlist at 67, was previously shortlisted in 1997 for Quarantine.

Colm Tóibín has also been nominated for The Testament of Mary (Viking). He was previously been shortlisted twice, for The Blackwater Lightship in 1999 and The Master in 2004.

Independent publishers are well represented, with Canongate's Ruth Ozeki longlisted for A Tale for the Time Being, and Granta's Eleanor Catton longlisted for The Luminaries. Scottish publisher Sandstone Press is also represented, with Eve Harris' The Marrying of Chani Kaufman. Sandstone was longlisted in 2011 for Jane Rogers' The Testament of Jessie Lamb.

Other longlisted titles are Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire (Fourth Estate), NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names (Chatto & Windus), Alison Macleod's Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton), Charlotte Mendelson's Almost English (Mantle) and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart (Doubleday Ireland).

More than half of the 13 authors are women. Represented on the list are authors from Britain, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Ireland.

Chair of the judges Robert Macfarlane told The Bookseller: "After we the put the list together we tried to see what links them together, and all that linked them was how varied they are, in form, in tone, in length. I think they are all very contemporary—even the historical books look forward, and they are interested in disasters, whether financial or natural, and globalisation."

He added: "We don't think about the commercial impact when we choose, but one of the wonderful consequences of the prize is that it can bring people to novels they may not have seen. That a debut novel from a small Scottish publisher (The Marrying of Chani Kaufman) will now be seen by more people is wonderful."

The judges picked the longlist from 151 titles. On 10th September, they will announce a shortlist of six, before the final winner is announced on 15th October. The shortlisted authors will all win £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book, while the winner will receive a further £50,000.

The other judges are Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Natalie Haynes, Martha Kearney and Stuart Kelly.