The magnificent 70: Guardian Not the Booker prize longlist announced

Let’s get straight to business. Our longlist of Not the Booker novels is so long this year that we don’t have much space to waste.

These are the nominations for this year’s Not the Booker prize, which is, as ever, a Guardian mug:

View image in fullscreen

Louis Armand – Abacus (Vagabond Press)
Kate Atkinson – A God in Ruins (Doubleday)
Sara Baume – Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Tramp Press)
Richard Beard – Acts of the Assassins (Vintage)
Patricia Borlenghi – Dorek: Deaf and Unheard (Patrician Press)
Liam Brown – Real Monsters (Legend Press)
Emily Bullock – The Longest Fight (Myriad)
Joanna Campbell – Tying Down the Lion (Brick Lane Publishing)
Alex Christofi – Glass (Serpent’s Tail)
Gavin Corbett – Green Glowing Skull (Fourth Estate)
Peter Cowlam – Across the Rebel Network (CentreHouse Press)
Michael Crummey – Sweetland (Corsair)
Melanie Finn – Shame (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Esther Freud – Mr Mac and Me (Bloomsbury)
Andrew Raymond Drennan – The Limits of the World (Cargo)
Claire Fuller – Our Endless Numbered Days (Fig Tree)
Ryan Gattis – All Involved (Picador)
Kat Gordon – The Artificial Anatomy of Parks (Legend Press)
Stephen Grant – A Moment More Sublime (Upper West Side Philosophers)
James Hannah – The A to Z of You and Me (Doubleday)
Sarah Hall – The Wolf Border (Faber & Faber)
Kent Haruf – Our Souls at Night (Picador)
Julietta Harvey – One Third of Paradise (Polar Books)
Aleksandar Hemon – The Making of Zombie Wars (Picador)
Nicholas Hogg – Tokyo (Cargo)
Alex Hourston – In My House (Faber)
Debbie Howells – The Bones of You (Macmillan)
Michael Hurley – The Lonely (Tartarus)
Kirstin Innes – Fishnet (Freight Books)
Peter Jaeger – A Field Guide to Lost Things (If P Then Q)
Marlon James – A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld)
Benjamin Johncock – The Last Pilot (Myriad)
Tasha Kavanagh – Things We Have in Common (Canongate)
Niyati Keni – Esperanza Street (And Other Stories)
Catherine Lacey – Nobody Is Ever Missing (Granta)
Atticus Lish – Preparation for the Next Life (Oneworld)
Joanne Limburg – A Want of Kindness: A Novel of Queen Anne (Atlantic)
Oliver Langmead – Dark Star (Unsung Stories)
Attica Locke – Pleasantville (Serpent’s Tail)
Colin MacIntyre – The Letters of Ivor Punch (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Richard Makin – Mourning (Equus Press)
Tom McCarthy – Satin Island (Cape)
Gavin McCrea – Mrs Engels (Scribe)
Paul McVeigh – The Good Son (Salt)
Philip Miller – The Blue Horse (Freight Books)
Stefan Mohamed – Bitter Sixteen (Salt)
Margaret Montgomery – Beauty Tips for Girls (Cargo)
Paul Murray – The Mark and the Void (Hamish Hamilton)
Chigozie Obioma – The Fishermen (Pushkin Press)
Tony O’Neill – Black Neon (Bluemoose Books)
Peter Nichols – The Rocks (Heron Books)
Leslie Parry – Church of Marvels (Hodder & Stoughton)
Sarah Pinborough – The Death House (Gollancz)
Wayne Price – Mercy Seat (Freight Books)
Lucy Ribchester – The Hourglass Factory (Simon & Schuster)
Marilynne Robinson – Lila (Virago)
Robert Ronsson – Out of Such Darkness (Patrician)
David Rose – Meridian (Unthank)
Jim Shepard – The Book of Aron (Quercus)
JP Smythe – Way Down Dark (Hodder & Stoughton)
Colette Snowden – The Secret to Not Drowning (Bluemoose Books)
Neal Stephenson – Seveneves (The Borough Press)
Sara Taylor – The Shore (William Heinemann)
Scarlett Thomas – The Seed Collectors (Canongate)
Laura Van Den Berg – Find Me (Ebury)
Rebecca Wait – The Followers (Picador)
Catriona Ward – Rawblood (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Benjamin Wood – The Ecliptic (Scribner UK)
Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life (Doubleday)
Nell Zink – The Wallcreeper (Dorothy Books)

There are 70 novels on that list. They come from dozens of different publishers. They have been written by authors from all over the English-speaking world. They cover a huge range of subjects. And the next stages of the competition will reveal the quality of these books. Or of six of them, anyway.

The choice of which six is – as ever – down to you. This round of the Not the Booker prize is as democratic as it gets, give or take a few mysterious briefings in the press, massive donations from JCB and the odd bit of lobbying and funny handshaking in the members’ bar. Hey! You know what, this round of the Not the Booker prize is better than most democracies. It’s pure. It’s open to everyone. It happens in the open under the cleansing light of the computer screen. Anyone can take part.

If you want to become part of this noble process, all you have to do is vote for two books from the longlist, from two different publishers, and accompany those votes with a review of at least one of your chosen books in the comments section below. This review should be something over 100 words long, although, as the rules state, we probably won’t be counting all that carefully.

That’s all you need to know. I hope. So get voting. You’ve got one week. The deadline is 23:39 BST on 2 August. Which is to say, the middle of next Sunday night, ready for an announcement early the following week, just as soon as I’ve managed to do the counting, the recounting, the calibrating and the listing.

Let’s go!