British-Indian author Chetna Maroo’s debut novel ‘Western Lane’ has been long-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize. The prestigious list containing 13 books was announced yesterday. The selection was made from a total of 163 books, published betweenOctober 2022 and September 2023. It features books from four continents, four Irish writers, four debut novelists, as well as 10 authors who are recognised by the Booker Prize for the first time.
 
The long-list will be further trimmed to a shortlist of six books, to be announced on September 21. And finally, the 2023 Booker Prize winner will be announced on November 26 at an award ceremony in London. Set within the British-Gujarati community, Kenya-born Maroo's debut novel has been praised by the Booker judges for its use of the sport of squash as a metaphor for complex human emotions. The novel revolves around the story of an 11-year-old girl named Gopi and her bonds with her family. It talks about grief, sisterhood, and a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself.
 
Maroo's stories have appeared in anthologies and have been published in the Paris Review, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review. She was the recipient of the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an accountant. The Booker Prize is open annually to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. The prize was established as the Booker Prize for Fiction after the company Booker, McConnell Limited began sponsoring the event in 1969 and was later renamed. The winner receives 50,000 Great Britain Pound and a trophy named ‘Iris’, in honour of the 1978 Booker Prize-winning Irish-British author Iris Murdoch.