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Man Booker Prize 2009 Longlist includes 
Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger

Neyland-born Sarah Waters has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009 for the third time. Her latest book The Little Stranger (Virago, 2009), follows her previous two titles Fingersmith (Virago, 2002) and The Night Watch (Virago, 2006) in being longlisted. Both of these went on to make the shortlist of six. Announced on the 28 July 2009, the prestigious longlist of twelve novels written in English by writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe, also includes A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book (Chatto & Windus) and J.M. Coetzee's Summertime (Harvill Secker). Both of these writers are previous recipients of the £50,000 prize. 

The 2009 judging panel comprises the broadcaster James Naughtie, the biographer and critic Lucasta Miller, Literary Editor of The Sunday Telegraph Michael Prodger, academic, journalist and broadcaster John Mullan and comedian and broadcaster Sue Perkins.

The Little Stranger (Virago, 2009) is a chilling ghost story set in a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire. It follows the central character's developing friendship with an aristocratic family in the last throws of life, weaving class resentment with unlikely love and a burgeoning sense of unease as the long hot summer turns to a gloomy winter. 

Sarah Waters now lives in London. She gained a PhD in English literature for her thesis on lesbian and gay historical fictions, 1870 to the present. She started writing novels as soon as she received her doctorate, and has enjoyed considerable success with the five she has so far published (all with Virago). Sarah has received numerous awards and accolades including a Somerset Maugham Award and the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction. Her first three books have been adapted for television, with the fourth currently in development with the BBC. Described as a lesbian-genre novelist, her work is often cited as pivotal in drawing these themes into the mainstream. 

The 2009 shortlist will be announced on 8 September, and the winner on the 6 October 2009. For more information on Sarah Waters, visit her Academi Writers of Wales entry or her website. For more information on the Man Booker Prize, click here.