There are four women in the shortlist of six for the Booker Prize 2019 announced on Tuesday in London. Literary heavyweights and previous winners Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie lead the chart as top contenders even as there are diverse voices with equal potential to make the cut in the prize that never ceases to surprise.

Margaret Atwood, Lucy Ellmann, Bernardine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma, Salman Rushdie and Elif Shafak are the shortlisted authors. The shortlist was announced by the 2019 Chair of Judges Peter Florence, at a press conference at London’s British Library.

“The common thread is our admiration for the extraordinary ambition of each of these books. There is an abundance of humour, of political and cultural engagement, of stylistic daring and astonishing beauty of language. Like all great literature, these books teem with life, with a profound and celebratory humanity. We have a shortlist of six extraordinary books and we could make a case for each of them as winner, but I want to toast all of them as “winners”. Anyone who reads all six of these books would be enriched and delighted, would be awe-struck by the power of story, and encouraged by what literature can do to set our imaginations free,” Florence said.