Image by David Levenson/Getty Images

By Talya Zax July 27, 2017

Paul Auster’s gargantuan novel “4 3 2 1” is one of 13 novels to make the longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize.

The list, a who’s-who of contemporary literature, also includes previous Man Booker-winner Arundhati Roy for her sophomore novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” Colson Whitehead for his Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Underground Railroad,” George Saunders for “Lincoln in the Bardo,” and Zadie Smith for “Swing Time.”

The Man Booker Prize, awarded annually to the best novel of that year written in English and published in the United Kingdom, is distinct from the Man Booker International Prize, awarded for a year’s best novel in translation. The 2017 Man Booker International Prize was awarded to David Grossman and translator Jessica Cohen for “A Horse Walks Into a Bar.”

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Paul Beatty won the 2016 Man Booker Prize for his novel “The Sellout.” Writing on the novel before its win, the Forward’s Adam Langer posited that Beatty might be the next Philip Roth.

Previous Jewish winners of the prize include Howard Jacobson, in 2010, for “The Finkler Question,” and Bernice Rubens, in 1970, for “The Elected Member.”

The shortlist for the prize will be announced on September 13, and the winner on October 17.

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