Booker Prize candidates line up

Here is the short-list for the 2001 Booker Prize for Fiction:

:: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (Faber and Faber, £16.99)

Carey won the Booker Prize in 1988 for his novel Oscar and Lucinda which was later made into a film starring Ralph Fiennes.

He was also short-listed for the award in 1985 for his epic, Illywhacker.

He is the author of six novels and has also written a collection of short stories.

He was born in Australia in 1943 and lives in New York.

His latest work is a fictional account of Australia’s infamous anti-hero. It tells the story of Ned Kelly as orphan, horse thief, farmer, bush ranger, bank robber, police killer and finally Australia’s beloved Robin Hood.

:: Atonement by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape, £16.99)

A previous winner of the Booker in 1998 for Amsterdam, his other works include The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers and Enduring Love. He was born in the UK in 1948 and lives in Oxford.

Set in 1935 in an England of class division, Atonement, is an emotional exploration of shame, forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution. Three people’s lives are changed forever following the events of a hot summer’s day.

:: The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert (William Heinemann, £12.99)

Born in Oxford in 1971 to German and Australian parents, Seiffert now lives in Berlin. This is her debut novel.

It tells the story of three ordinary 20th century Germans and their attempts to come to terms with their nationality and its Nazi past.

:: Oxygen by Andrew Miller (Sceptre, £16.99)

Born in Bristol in 1960, Miller was brought up in the West Country and has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France.

His first novel, Ingenious Pain, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. He lives in London.

Set in the summer of 1997, Oxygen, follows three characters Alec, who is caring for his dying mother, Larry, his brother and a Hungarian playwright Laszlo Lazlar.

As Laszlo struggles to come to terms with memories of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, each character faces up to a different challenge and an act of personal liberation.

:: number9dream by David Mitchell (Sceptre, £10.00)

Born in Lancashire in 1969 he currently lives and teaches in Hiroshima.

His first novel Ghostwritten won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

number9dream is described as a detective story and family chronicle and follows a 20-year-old Japanese man’s search for the father he has never met.

His search leads him through Tokyo’s underworld back to the place where it all began.

:: Hotel World by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton, £10.99)

Born in Inverness in 1962, she now lives in Cambridge. Her first novel, Like, was published in 1997.

Hotel World takes the reader through a night in the life of five people’s very different worlds.

It is described as a life-affirming book about death and a death-affirming book about life.