Canadian author Sarah Bernstein shortlisted for $84K Booker Prize

Canadian author Sarah Bernstein made the shortlist for the 2023 Booker Prizefor her novelStudy of Obedience.

The 50,000 (approx. $84,816 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best original novel written in the English language and published in the U.K.

Study for Obedienceexplores themes of guilt, abuse and prejudice through the eyes of its unreliable narrator. In it, a woman leaves her hometown to move to a "remote northern country"to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife recently left him. Soon after her arrival, the community is struck by unusual events from collective bovine hysteria to a potato blight. The locals, already suspicious of newcomers, become hostile towardher as she tries to find a way to shape her life.

Study for Obedienceis also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, a$100,000 award that annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.

Bernstein is a scholar and writer who was born in Montreal and now teaches literature and creative writing in Scotland. She was recently named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

The other shortlisted writers are Jonathan Escoffery for If I Survive You, Paul Harding for This Other Eden, Paul Lynch for Prophet Song, Chetna Maroo for Western Lane and Paul Murray for The Bee Sting. All six authors made the Booker shortlist for the first time and will receive 2,500 (approx. $4,143 Cdn) and a bound edition of their book.

This year's Booker Prize jury is chaired by two-time Booker-shortlisted Canadian author Esi Edugyan. She is joined on the judging panel by actor, writer and director Adjoa Andoh; poet, lecturer, editor and critic Mary Jean Chan; author and professor James Shapiro; and actor and writer Robert Webb.

"The best novels invoke a sense of timelessness even while saying something about how we live now. Our six finalists are marvels of form," said Edugyan in a press statement.

"All are fuelled by a kind of relentless truth-telling, even when that honesty forces us to confront dark acts. And yet however long we may pause in the shadows, humour, decency, and grace are never far from hand."

The 2023 winner will be announced at an award ceremony on Sunday, Nov. 26.

Since 2013, authors from any nationality have been eligible for the prize. No Canadians were recognized for the 2022 prize, but Canadian authors Mary Lawson and Rachel Cusk made the Booker Prize longlist in 2021.

Margaret Atwood shared the 2019 prize with British novelist Bernardine Evaristo. Atwood was recognized for her novel The Testaments, and Evaristo for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. They split the prize money evenly.

Two other Canadians have won the prize since its inception in 1969: Michael Ondaatje in 1992 for The English Patient and Yann Martel in 2002 for Life of Pi.