Americans Ferris, Fowler on Booker Prize shortlist

LONDON (AP) — Three British writers, two Americans and an Australian are finalists for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction, open to U.S. authors for the first time.

The British nominees, announced Tuesday, are Ali Smith’s dual-narrative story “How to Be Both,” Howard Jacobson’s futuristic dystopia “J” and Neel Mukherjee’s Calcutta-set “The Lives of Others.” The U.S. is represented by Joshua Ferris’ cyber-identity tale “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour” and Karen Joy Fowler’s unusual family story, “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.”