From Arundhati Roy to George Saunders: Here is the 2017 Man Booker Prize Longlist

Arundhati Roy's latest novel, 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness', dives into the complexities of the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. The novel demonstrates on every page the author's storytelling gifts.

Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer who is also an activist and focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality.

Her novel 'The God of Small Things', won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997.

Roy was featured in the 2014 list of Time 100, the 100 most influential people in the world.

The captivating first novel by George Saunders talks about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven-year-old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War.

George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books.

Saunders won the National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2004, and second prize in the O. Henry Awards in 1997.

In 2013, he won the PEN/Malamud Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Saunders's 'Tenth of December: Stories' won the 2013 Story Prize for short-story collections and the inaugural (2014) Folio Prize.

Zadie Smith's 'Swing Time' is a dazzlingly energetic and deeply human coming-of-age story about friendship and music and stubborn roots.

The English novelist, essayist, and short story writer was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors in 2003 and 2013.

Smith has won the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2006 and her novel 'White Teeth' was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize winner brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black slaves in the pre-Civil War era.

'The Underground Railroad' is the sixth novel by the American author.

The novel has received a number of awards, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction.

The previous book to win both the Pulitzer and the National Book prizes was The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx, in 1993.

'Autumn' is the first installment in Ali Smith's novel quartet 'Seasonal': four standalone books, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are), exploring what time is and how we experience it in our ways with narrative.

The 54-yr-old Scottish author published her first book, 'Free Love and Other Stories', in 1995 and won the Saltire First Book of the Year award and Scottish Arts Council Book Award.

Author Sebastian Barry, who's book, 'Days Without End' is also part of this year's longlist, has described her as 'Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting'.

Author Jon McGregor's novel, 'Reservoir 13', tells the story of many lives haunted by one family's loss.

Jon McGregor is a British novelist and short story writer.

In 2002, his first novel, 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things', was longlisted for the Booker Prize as its youngest contender. His second novel, 'So Many Ways to Begin', was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006. This is his third nomination.

In 2012, his third novel was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award.

'Home Fire' is a nuanced, searing, and exceedingly timely novel about love and loyalty, ideology and identity.

Kamila Shamsie is a Pakistani novelist who writes in the English language. Shamsie wrote her first novel, 'In The City by the Sea', while still in college, and it was published in 1998.

In 2010, Shamsie won an Award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. In 2013 she was included in the Granta list of 20 best young British writers.

Funny and strange, Mike McCormack’s ambitious and other-worldly novel, 'Solar Bones', plays with form and defies convention.

A beautiful and haunting elegy, this story of order and chaos, love and loss captures how minor decisions ripple into waves and test our integrity every day.

Mike McCormack is an Irish novelist and short story writer. He has published two collections of short stories and three novels.

In 1996, he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for Getting It In the Head. In May 2016, Solar Bones won the Goldsmiths Prize.

'Elmet' is New York-born author Fiona Mozley’s first novel, currently scheduled for November publication.

It narrates the story of a troubled family living in a remote copse in Elmet (the name of the ancient Britton kingdom in what is now the West Riding).

Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, Mohsin Hamid's 'Exit West' tells an unforgettable story about a young couple and their relationship in a time where the world is taken by storm by migrants.

Mohsin Hamid is a Pakistani novelist. His first novel, 'Moth Smoke', was published in 2000.

His second novel, 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' was published in 2007 and became a million-copy international best seller, reaching No.4 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Emily Fridlund’s debut novel, 'History of Wolves', depicts the faltering steps towards independence of 14-year-old Linda, the awkward daughter of ex-commune members living in rural Minnesota.

Sebastian Barry’s latest work, 'Days Without End', is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. The novel is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

Sebastian Barry is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers.

This is his third Man Booker nomination. He has twice been shortlisted before for his novels 'A Long Long Way' (2005) and 'The Secret Scripture' (2008).

In January 2017, Barry was awarded the Costa Book of the Year prize for Days Without End, becoming the first novelist to win the prestigious prize twice

'4 3 2 1' is Paul Auster’s first novel to have appeared in seven years.

The novel is the story of Archie Ferguson told at four different times, and in four different versions. The story is set in the Newark, New Jersey and New York City areas in the 50's and 60's.

Paul Benjamin Auster is an American writer and director whose writing blends absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning in his works.

His books have been translated into more than forty languages.