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‘my brother sends his best says Nemanja’s brother and shoots his gun just once… my father’s warm body tumbles into the dead leaves, his big eyes fixed on him, my father’s big eyes locked into Nemanja’s brother’s eyes, his strong hands grab my father and turn him to the setting sun’ 

‘Names that end with ‘son’, spelled with just one ‘s’, they sound American. Easy to pronounce in English. Couldn’t tell you why, but it’s true. A name is important, a marker you should finesse if you can. Ia … is that short for something?’

‘He sets down his weapon, then with difficulty takes off his boots, their smell (excrement, musty sweat) adds even more to his exhaustion. His fingers on the frayed laces are dry matchsticks, slightly burned in places; the nails are the same colour as the boots’

‘Maybe this is the last time he will walk down the familiar corridor as the man called Noon Merckem, that door there on the left with those welcoming panes of glass could mean the end of his existence, weak in the knees like a man being dragged to the gallows, that’s how he feels in this instant’ 

‘My beloved aunt, I am as innocent and forged in the image and likeness of God as any other, as every other, though I have been a cabin boy, shopkeeper, and soldier, and before then, long before, a small girl at your skirts.’

‘King of kings they called him, and they said, We rejoice in him, we rejoice in his wife and her beauty; they said, We love this country, and then we said, We love this country. We had to rejoice in his newborn son, for longer than we ever would a birth in our own family, his newborn son, in the far-off Palace of Flowers.’

We want as many people as possible to enjoy the 13 longlisted novels, so we’ve got 52 books to share with creators who love to read and talk about books online 

Do you prefer gripping page-turners or sweeping epics? Books that make you cry or ones that restore your faith in humanity? Tell us what you like best and we’ll recommend a longlisted book