The shortlist for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize has been announced.

The shortlisted titles are:

• Can You Tolerate This by Ashleigh Young
• The Crossway by Guy Stagg
• Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• Ordinary People by Diana Evans
• The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus
• There There by Tommy Orange
• West by Carys Davies

Launched in 2014 as an alternative to the Man Booker Prize, the £30,000 Folio Prize is awarded out of the UK to the best new work of literature published in the English language in a given year, regardless of form. Books are nominated for the prize by members of the Academy, a body of over 250 writers and critics that includes Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, A.S. Byatt, Zadie Smith and J.M. Coetzee.

The winner will be announced on Monday 20 May. Find out more about the Prize here.