Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka holds his 2022 British Booker Prize winner novel (French)

The winner of the British Booker Prize for fiction will be revealed Sunday evening in London, in a competition that this year is limited to novelists nominated for the first time to participate in the finalists of this prestigious literary reward.

None of this year's six finalists — two Americans, two Irishmen, a Canadian and a Kenyan — have been shortlisted before, while only one has been longlisted in previous editions.

The prize is one of the most prestigious literary rewards in the world, and has brought to fame many illustrious names in the literary field, including previous winners Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel and others.

The six books in this year's finale, "horrors, fun, joys and consolation," according to the organizers, will be presented on topics that address, among other things, injustice, immigration and political extremism.

This year's Literary Award is open to fiction by writers of any nationality written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between 2022 October 30 and 2023 September <>.

The winner will receive £50,63 ($<>,<>), as well as a morale boost to his literary career.

The six novels in the final competition, announced in September, were selected from a long list of 13 novels selected from 158 literary works included in the preliminary list.

Among them is The Bee Sting, by Irish author Paul Murray, a tragicomedy that looks at the role of fate in a family's troubles.

Murray was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010.

Another competing work is Kenyan writer Shitna Maro's influential debut Western, a story about grief and sisterhood about a teenage girl who finds meaning in her life through squash.

Paul Lynch's novel "Prophet Song" is set in Dublin as Ireland descends into a tyrannical system, a work that is likely to win the prize, according to observers.

The five-person prize committee also selected Jonathan Eskovrey's If I Survive You, about a Jamaican family and their chaotic new life in Miami.

Also competing is fellow American author Paul Harding, whose historical-inspired book This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island, an enclave off the U.S. coast where marginalized people flock to and choose as their new home.

Canada is also shortlisted through Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience. This novel explores themes of prejudice and guilt through a skeptical narrator.

Although none of the competing novelists have won the prize before, some are no strangers to awards, most notably Harding, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2010 for his first novel, The Reformers.

Marrow and Escoffre also made it to the shortlist for their first novel. Five novelists for their first novel have won the Booker Prize in previous editions, most recently Douglas Stewart for Shoggy Payne in 5.

The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969. Last year, Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the prize for his novel The Seven Moons of Almeida.

Source : Al Jazeera + Agencies