The longlist for the 2004 Man Booker Prize has been announced. The judges this year considered 132 books: 115 were submitted by publishers and the judges called in another 17 - a rather high number I feel.

I've been amazed by the amount of discussion of this year's longlist in the past week or so. The British press can always be counted on to fill vast column inches with Booker-related material at this time of year as one pundit after another tries to dissect the list down to quark-level or less. And this year (for the first time?) we are being kept informed of how the rest of the world views the prize via the auspices of numerous literary weblogs. The best of these, if only because it is dedicated to the prize, is the Man Booker 2004 weblog being maintained by 3AM Magazine. They are linking off to all corners of the globe in search of material.

For the first time in many years I'm going to be out of contact with the online world when both the shortlist and winner of this year's prize are announced. Given the number of websites out there devoted to the news I doubt you will have any trouble finding out what went on. I'll update the site as soon as I can after I get back home in late October.