Bill Clegg among debut novelists on list of writers considered for prestigious prize, while established names include Anne Enright and Marilynne Robinson

An American literary agent known for his ruthless negotiating and memoirs recounting his struggles with crack-cocaine and alcohol has made it on to the 2015 Man Booker longlist with his debut novel.

Bill Clegg is one of 13 writers who will compete for the £50,000 prize which, for the second year, considers writers of all nationalities writing in English.

Previously restricted to Commonwealth and Irish writers, the rule-change meant American novelists were included for the first time last year, and with five titles they make up the biggest contingent in this year’s longlist.

The list includes three debut writers alongside more established names such as Anne Enright, Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler and Andrew O’Hagan.

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The academic Michael Wood, who chaired the judging panel, said the list “represented many different ways of writing ... it is the range of what is going on with the novel that was striking to us”.

Wood said the judging meetings were forthright and open and judges did not mind being disagreed with. “There were lots of quite strenuous arguments … and it was good fun. One of my fears was that we would all like the same kinds of books and we would accidentally come out with good books that were all the same kind.”

That did not happen and they often surprised themselves, he said. An example was Clegg’s novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, which tells the story of a middle-aged woman struggling after a gas explosion kills her family.

Clegg is interesting because he is best known for pushing other writers and securing million-dollar deals in his role as an agent. His yet-to-be-published book was so coveted by publishers that the winning bidder, Gallery Books, set up a new imprint for literary fiction, Scout, with Did You Ever Have a Family as its opener. In the UK, it is published by Jonathan Cape.

It is Clegg’s first novel but not his first book. His memoirs include Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, in which he recounts how he spiralled out of control as he binged on crack, booze and sex; and Ninety Days, his story of how he tries to stay clean.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anne Enright at home in Bray, near Dublin. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The Guardian

Wood said: “People knew who Bill Clegg was and had read stories about him, and I don’t think we expected that much of it when we read it. But is a very impressive book. Agents and editors know good writing when they see it, but they don’t always write well themselves; this book is extraordinarily well written.”

Clegg admitted the pleasure at the news was mixed with sadness as his father died last Thursday. “He would have been delighted by this happy and very surprising news,” he said.

The book is likely to be successful, but he has no plans to give up his day job. “I am first and foremost an agent … you’d have to drag me out of my office. A life can contain many things and for me it is nice on my vacations and mornings to have a place to go to work out some of the ideas I have.”

Bookmakers have installed the Hawaiian writer Hanya Yanagihara as favourite to win, with William Hill offering 3/1. Her 734-page book is a difficult novel to read, said Wood. It is a harrowing, unsparing story of violence, sexual abuse and self-harm.

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“If you have any yearning for a little bit of redemption or uplift at finally getting over things, this is not the book for you,” said Wood. “It is beautifully done, but you have to go with it.”

There are several big names absent from the list including Kazuo Ishiguro and forthcoming novels from Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, John Banville, William Boyd and Margaret Atwood. Wood said they were all writers judges admired but “we just had to make choices”.

Enright is the only former winner on the list, nominated for The Green Road, which tells the stories of a family dispersing and coming together. Kate Clanchy, reviewing the book for the Guardian, called it “a brilliant, devastating, radical novel”.

Marlon James becomes the first Jamaican writer to be nominated for his book A Brief History of Seven Killings, which tells the story of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley and also the wider story of Jamaica in the 1970s and early 80s when guns flooded in and violence exploded.



The New York Times wrote: “It’s like a Tarantino remake of The Harder They Come but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner.”

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There are three British writers on the longlist, two with Booker form. O’Hagan, who was shortlisted for his novel Our Fathers in 1999 and longlisted for Be Near Me in 2006, returns to the fray with The Illuminations, whose two main characters are an 82-year-old woman with early-stage dementia in a care home and her soldier grandson serving in Afghanistan.

Reviewing The Illuminations in the Guardian, Hermione Lee said it was a book that asked profound questions “about how the truth gets reshaped and rearranged, and about whether, under every kind of circumstance, it is possible to be true to yourself”.

Tom McCarthy, whose book C was shortlisted in 2010, is in contention with Satin Island, a relatively short book at 176 pages which has a narrator known only as U, an anthropologist employed by a large, international company. It is not a straightforward read. “I’m not giving anything away when I say there’s not much plot or, for that matter, human interest,” wrote Phil Hogan in the Observer.

The third is Sunjeev Sahota, who was on Granta’s list of the best young writers in 2013 and is longlisted for his second novel, The Year of the Runaways, about the experiences of migrant workers in Sheffield.

At the top of many people’s tip lists had been Robinson and she is indeed on the longlist with Lila, the third novel in her adored Gilead series.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest US author Marilynne Robinson. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

The other US writers are Laila Lalami for The Moor’s Account, which recounts the voyage in 1527 of Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez to claim La Florida for the Spanish crown; and the great chronicler of American domestic life, the Pulitzer prizewinning novelist Anne Tyler, for her 20th novel A Spool of Blue Thread.

The Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma is longlisted for his debut The Fishermen, set in the 1990s and telling the story of four middle-class brothers who go fishing and encounter a chilling prophecy.



New Zealander Anna Smaill is the only Antipodean representative with her debut novel The Chimes, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime that inflicts amnesia through music.



India is represented by Anuradha Roy for her third novel Sleeping on Jupiter, which is about a woman revisiting the violence and sexual abuse of her childhood.

The judges – who include Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne, will now reread the books and announce a shortlist on 15 September, with a winner named on 13 October.

• This article was amended on 26 August 2015. An earlier version said the sole African writer on the longlist was Chigozie Obioma. That overlooked the Moroccan-born writer Leila Lalami.