INVERNESSIAN author Ali Smith said she was "delighted" yesterday after her latest work Autumn made the Man Booker Prize shortlist.
The title – the first of a four-part series – is one of 13 in the running for the prestigious award and sees 101-year-old Daniel Gluck and 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand exploring the history of their relationship in the wake of the Brexit vote in a country that "seems to have changed".
Judges said that the work "deftly questions what it means to be displaced in one's own country" and is a "eulogy for lost time".
The selection marks the fourth time Smith has been shortlisted for the award. She said: "I am so delighted."
The winner will be announced next month, with Mohsin Hamid, who shares the same publisher as Smith, also in the running for Exit West.
The title follows Nadia and Saeed as they flee civil war and join "the great outpouring of people" looking for safety in unknown places.
Debut novelist Fiona Mozley was also shortlisted for Elmet, about a bare-knuckle fighter raising his children "in defiance of social norms".
However, heavyweight Arundhati Roy's second novel The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness – her first in 20 years – has not been shortlisted, while British literary star Zadie Smith's Swing Time was also dropped after making the longlist earlier this year.
Meanwhile, George Saunders has been named the bookies' favourite for Lincoln In The Bardo, which takes place on the night that Abraham Lincoln he lays to rest his son in a cemetery.
Other nominees include Paul Auster for 4321, which is set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war and civil rights movement, and Emily Fridlund for History of Wolves.
The acclaimed book explores "the effects of neglectful parenting" and the repercussions of childhood isolation and loneliness.
Joanna Prior of Penguin, which published Smith and Hamid's books, said: "They are powerful and original storytellers and their books have the capacity both to move and to change us.
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