When I saw the Booker prize shortlist — the strongest in years, for my money — I almost didn’t notice the most obvious theme. Five out of the six authors who have made the cut are women. So commonplace has it become for females to dominate prize lists, I momentarily overlooked this historical shift. This is the largest number in Booker’s 55-year history.
And yet there’s nothing about this that feels forced or unnatural. The six shortlisted books are extremely varied in subject matter, perspective and narrative techniques. There’s only one British writer on the list — Samantha Harvey for Orbital — but it’s not as if the Americans rule as they did on the longlist and have done since the prize was opened up