The Fishermen is Mr Obioma's first novel and has enjoyed rave reviews on BBC and New York Times. After considering 156 books for this year’s prize, the five judges chose it as one of the 13 novels for the 2015 long list and now, the book has also made the final shortlist of six.
A US Pulitzer Prize winner and two British authors were among the six writers shortlisted by the judges. Tom McCarthy and Sunjeev Sahota are on the list alongside Pulitzer winner Anne Tyler and fellow US writer Hanya Yanagihara, plus Jamaican Marlon James
Australian author Richard Flanagan won last year’s prize for his wartime novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Judges will announce the eventual winner of the prestigious Booker prize at a gala dinner on 13 October.
At 28 years old, Mr Obioma is the youngest nominee ever, while Marlon James is the first Jamaican-born author to be nominated for the prize. Mr McCarthy is the only shortlisted author to have been nominated before, for C in 2010.
Michael Wood, the chairman of the judges, said: “We are delighted by the diversity of the list but it is an accident as we were not looking for diversity. It suggests the novel is alive and well in different places.”
Mr Wood is joined on the 2015 panel of judges by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne. From its inception, only Commonwealth, Irish and Zimbabwean citizens were eligible to receive the prize but in 2013 this eligibility was widened to any English language novel.
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