What happened to the American takeover? The victory last year of George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, hard on the heels of Paul Beatty winning in 2016 for The Sellout, was proof for some that no other nationality would ever stand a chance of winning the Booker.

The 2018 longlist, announced today, will console them: just three novels are by US writers, compared to six from the UK, and two apiece from Ireland and Canada.

What might ruffle feathers is that one of the US books, Sabrina, is a graphic novel. Another, The Long Take by Scottish poet Robin Robertson, is “a novel in verse”, which you might think makes it a poem. This list is clearly meant to make you ask: “What is a novel, really?”

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape)

Ondaatje’s superb novel, his first since 2011, is a spy mystery and a coming-of-age tale set during the Blitz. The invented word “warlight” is elucidated late on: “during the Blitz, when there was just warlight, the river dark save for one dimmed orange light on bridges…” Read the full review

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The Overstory by Richard Powers (William Heinemann)

This absorbing novel about climate apocalypse opens with chestnut planting in the 1800s and grows steadily outwards until it reaches the age of virtual worlds. Can the 61-year-old Pulitzer finalist and computer programmer put “ecofiction” on the map? Read the full review