Margaret Atwood, Lucy Ellmann, Bernardine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma, Salman Rushdie and Elif Shafak have been shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction.

The shortlist was announced on Tuesday by the chair of the judging team, Peter Florence, at a press conference at London’s British Library.

“Like all great literature, these books teem with life, with a profound and celebratory humanity,” he said.

The shortlist, selected from a longer list of 151 books, includes Atwood’s sequel to dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale, Ellmann’s monologue by an Ohio housewife, Rushdie’s post-modern rewrite of Don Quixote, Evaristo’s story of female, mostly Black, British lives across generations, Obiomo’s story about the trials of a young Nigerian man on a quest to improve his prospects, and Shafak’s novel about allegiances within the brothels of Istanbul.

The 2019 shortlist is:

• Margaret Atwood (Canada), The Testaments (Chatto & Windus)
• Lucy Ellmann (UK/USA), Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)
• Bernardine Evaristo (UK), Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)
• Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)
• Salman Rushdie (UK/India), Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)
• Elif Shafak (Turkey/UK), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)

The prize is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK or Ireland.

The 2019 winner will be announced on Monday 14 October at an awards ceremony.