Man Booker prize 2018 longlist includes graphic novel for the first time

Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, which explores the disappearance of a young woman, ‘does just what good fiction should do’ – and will compete with Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight

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A graphic novel about a vanished young woman and a thriller about a vanished mother have elbowed their way on to a giant-slaying Man Booker prize longlist that “capture[s] something about a world on the brink”.

Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, the first graphic novel ever to reach the Booker longlist, explores the chilling effect of 24-hour news after a girl has disappeared. Judges picked it as a contender for the £50,000 prize ahead of titles from former winners including Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Peter Carey and Alan Hollinghurst, describing it as “oblique, subtle [and] minimal” and saying the “changing shape of fiction” meant it was only a matter of time before a graphic novel made the cut.

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