Man Booker Prize longlist announced

The 13-strong longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2010 was announced today.

Nominees for the prize, which is considered the leading literary award in the English-speaking world, include David Mitchell, Damon Gulgat and Rose Tremain - who have all been shortlisted before - and Peter Carey, who has previously won the award twice. The Independent's columnist Howard Jacobson also picks up his second longlist nomination.

The chair of judges, Andrew Motion said: "Here are thirteen exceptional novels - books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain."

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on 7 September. The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on 12 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall.

The winner of the prize will receive £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

The full longlist is:

Peter Carey - Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue - Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen Dunmore - The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut - In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy - The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy - C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

Lisa Moore - February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray - Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain - Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)