A hard-going Booker longlist

Here is the Booker longlist, announced earlier this afternoon:

The Yips by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)

Philida by André Brink (Harvill Secker)

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon Books)

Skios by Michael Frayn (Faber & Faber)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday)

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (And Other Stories)

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt)

Umbrella by Will Self (Bloomsbury)

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (Faber & Faber)

Communion Town by Sam Thompson (Fourth Estate)

As expected, the judges are clearly determined to avoid last year’s ‘dumbing-down’ controversy. The list is packed with ambitious, critically acclaimed novels. The Yips by Nicola Barker, ‘the female Martin Amis’, is almost universally adored by high-brow reviewers. Will Self’s Umbrella makes colossal demands of the reader’s attention. Ned Beauman, who is the toast of literary London at present, enters with The Teleportation Accident, which is an inventive and by all accounts ‘dazzling’ work.