the land. It is Crace's second shortlisting, for a novel that is probably, he says, his last.

Women outnumber men on the shortlist for the first time since 2006. They are Eleanor Catton, at 28 the youngest writer, for her 832-page epic The Luminaries; Ruth Ozeki, an ordained Buddhist priest, for A Tale for the Time Being; Jhumpa Lahiri, who was appointed to the president's committee on the arts and humanities by Barack Obama, for The Lowland; and NoViolet Bulawayo, the only debut novelist, for We Need New Names.

Macfarlane said there had been "an exhausting number of child narrators" among this year's entries, but none stood out like Bulawayo's creation, Darling. The writer is the first Zimbabwean shortlisted for the prize. Speaking from a hotel in Cape Town, Southreasons that Tóibín's book qualified as a novel. "Yes it is compact, but it is also dense and it is far-reaching. This is a short novel but one we felt is long in the memory."

The judges whittled down the 152 entries to six in an amicable fashion, Macfarlane said. "The judging process was a great pleasure. The carpet remains unbloodied, there were no flare-ups, no put-downs, no walkouts, no punch-ups."

The other judges this year are the BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney, the classicist and critic Natalie Haynes, and the former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday Stuart Kelly. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be named on 17 October.